Two prominent former rugby players are furthering their extraterrestrial aspirations as NASA turns its attention to the Moon and Mars. 

Former West Point player and Eagle Anne McClain, who also played for Clifton in the UK and for Seattle, is in the NASA track to walk on the moon. McClain has already been to space, having been to the International Space Station.  

See Anne McLain's NASA Video

Anne McClain is a member of the Artemis Team, a select group of astronauts charged with focusing on the development and training efforts for early Artemis missions. Through the Artemis program NASA and a coalition of international partners will return to the Moon to learn how to live on other worlds. With Artemis missions NASA will send the first woman and the next man to the Moon in 2024 and about once per year thereafter.

Meanwhile, Stanford All American and former USA 7s Eagle Jessica Watkins is also part of the Artemis program. The Colorado native, who played for the USA in the 2009 RWC 7s, has been working on as a geologist for NASA. She earned her undergraduate degree at Stanford and then went on to earn her PhD in Geology from UCLA. She conducted her graduate research on the emplacement mechanisms of large landslides on Mars and Earth.

She has worked at NASA’s Ames Research Center and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and was a science team collaborator for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity. 

See a video showing Watkins working on moon geology

McClain and Watkins are two of 18 astronauts named to the early Artemis missions.

(Additional Information from NASA