Astronauts Born in July – 8 Notable Birthdays

Here’s something the birthday-trivia sites won’t tell you: if you were born in July, you picked one of the worst months to share a birthday with an astronaut. Out of the more than 350 people NASA has sent to space, July is statistically among the thinnest birth months on the roster, tied near the bottom with December at roughly 33 spacefliers. Nobody knows why. Astronaut birthdays cluster oddly across the calendar, and July just drew a short straw.

That makes the July club a little exclusive. The people in it, though, are heavy hitters: a Mercury Seven legend, the last man to set foot on the Moon, half of the first all-woman spacewalk, and the commander who flew the first crewed Dragon. Below are eight of the most notable astronauts born in July, with the dates, the missions, and the reason each one matters.

Table of Contents

• The short version
• Why July is a rare astronaut birth month
• 8 notable astronauts born in July
• The July 28 cluster
• Birthdays celebrated in space
• July astronaut fun facts

The short version

If you just want the headliners, here’s the roster at a glance. Dates are birthdays, not mission dates.

Astronaut	Born	Best known for
Jessica Meir	Jul 1, 1977	First all-female spacewalk (2019)
Harrison Schmitt	Jul 3, 1935	Last man to walk on the Moon (Apollo 17)
Rick Husband	Jul 12, 1957	Commander of Columbia’s final mission, STS-107
Daniel Brandenstein	Jul 17, 1943	Commanded the historic STS-49 satellite rescue
Janet Kavandi	Jul 17, 1959	Three shuttle flights; later director of NASA Glenn
John Glenn	Jul 18, 1921	First American to orbit Earth; oldest person in space
Scott Parazynski	Jul 28, 1961	First person to both fly in space and summit Everest
Bob Behnken	Jul 28, 1970	Commander of the first crewed SpaceX Dragon

A quick note on Jessica Meir’s date: most databases list her birthday as July 1, 1977. You’ll occasionally see July 15 floated around, but July 1 is the date her published biographies use, so that’s what we’ll go with.

Why July is a rare astronaut birth month

Astronaut birthdays aren’t spread evenly across the year. When the hobbyist space blog Pillownaut crunched the NASA roster, July landed near the bottom of the pile, roughly tied with December for the fewest astronaut birthdays. March and October tend to run heavy; July runs light.

There’s no satisfying reason for it. Birth-month patterns in the general U.S. population skew slightly toward late summer and early fall, and you might expect a high-achiever cohort like astronauts to wobble around those baselines. But the sample is small. Fewer than 700 people have ever flown to space worldwide, and NASA’s corps is a few hundred of them. With numbers that small, the monthly counts bounce around on what is essentially statistical noise. July just happened to come up short.

Which is the fun part. A rare month means a tight, recognizable list instead of a sprawling database dump. So let’s meet them.

8 notable astronauts born in July

Jessica Meir — July 1, 1977. A marine biologist who studied diving penguins and bar-headed geese before she ever wore a flight suit, Meir flew to the International Space Station in 2019. On October 18 of that year she and Christina Koch stepped outside together for the first all-female spacewalk, a milestone that took NASA decades to reach. She speaks fluent Swedish, a leftover from a Stockholm research stint.

Harrison “Jack” Schmitt — July 3, 1935. Schmitt is the only trained geologist to have walked on the Moon, and because he and Gene Cernan crewed Apollo 17 in 1972, he’s tied to the title of last man to step onto the lunar surface. Schmitt actually descended the ladder ahead of Cernan and climbed back up first, so Cernan was technically the last to leave the surface, but Schmitt remains one of only twelve people ever to walk there — a full accounting of how many astronauts have walked on the Moon puts that number in striking perspective. He later served a single term as a U.S. Senator from New Mexico, and as of 2026 he’s still living, in his late 80s.

Rick Husband — July 12, 1957. A Texas-born Air Force test pilot, Husband piloted STS-96 and then commanded STS-107, the final flight of Space Shuttle Columbia. He and his six crewmates were lost on February 1, 2003, when the orbiter broke apart during reentry, sixteen minutes from home. He was a church choir singer who recorded a video message for his kids before every launch.

Daniel Brandenstein — July 17, 1943. A naval aviator who flew four shuttle missions, Brandenstein commanded STS-49 in 1992, the maiden flight of Endeavour. That mission featured the only three-person spacewalk in history, an improvised maneuver to hand-grab a stranded Intelsat satellite after robotic-arm capture kept failing. He later ran the Astronaut Office as chief.

Janet Kavandi — July 17, 1959. Born the same calendar day as Brandenstein, sixteen years apart. Raised in Carthage, Missouri, Kavandi flew three shuttle missions and logged over 33 days in orbit. After her flying days she ran an Astronaut Office branch and went on to direct NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland from 2016 until her 2019 retirement. She holds a doctorate in analytical chemistry.

John Glenn — July 18, 1921. The big one. One of the original Mercury Seven, Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth aboard Friendship 7 in February 1962, circling the planet three times. He then did something no astronaut had done before: he came back. At age 77, while serving as a U.S. Senator from Ohio, Glenn flew on Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998, making him the oldest person to reach space at the time, a record that stood for two decades.

Scott Parazynski — July 28, 1961. A physician and five-time shuttle flier with seven spacewalks to his name, Parazynski is the only person who has both flown in space and stood on the summit of Mount Everest. His signature moment came on STS-120 in 2007, when he was strapped to an extended robotic arm to repair a torn solar array while it was live with electricity.

Bob Behnken — July 28, 1970. Behnken shares his birthday with Parazynski to the day. A test pilot with a doctorate in mechanical engineering, he commanded the joint operations for Crew Dragon’s first crewed flight, Demo-2, launching with Doug Hurley on May 30, 2020, the first time astronauts left U.S. soil on an American spacecraft since the shuttle retired in 2011. He’s also a four-time spacewalker.

The July 28 cluster

Here’s a coincidence the database pages bury: two notable astronauts share July 28. Scott Parazynski (1961) and Bob Behnken (1970) were born on the same calendar day, nine years apart. Both are test-pilot-grade engineers, both are prolific spacewalkers, and both have a “first” attached to their name, Parazynski’s Everest-plus-space double and Behnken’s first crewed Dragon. July 17 doubles up too, shared by Daniel Brandenstein and Janet Kavandi. For a month this thin on birthdays, that’s a lot of overlap.

Birthdays celebrated in space

A July birthday on the roster is one thing. Spending your actual birthday in orbit is another, and a handful of astronauts have. Janet Kavandi, born July 17, flew long-duration shuttle missions, though her launch windows didn’t line up with her birthday. The more reliable place to catch a space birthday is the ISS, where crew rotations run for six months and a birthday is almost guaranteed to fall mid-mission.

Station tradition is low-key: a tortilla stands in for cake (crumbs are a hazard in microgravity), the crew sings over the comm loop, and mission control sometimes pipes up a message from family. No candles, since open flame and a closed, oxygen-rich cabin don’t mix.

July astronaut fun facts

• John Glenn held two records at once. First American to orbit, and 36 years later, oldest human in space. Few people bookend a career that cleanly.
• Harrison Schmitt is the only scientist to walk on the Moon. Every other moonwalker was a military test pilot. NASA added a geologist for Apollo 17, and Schmitt was it.
• Two July 28 birthdays, two “firsts.” Parazynski and Behnken share a birthday and a knack for being first at things.
• Jessica Meir went from penguins to spacewalks. Her doctoral work on diving physiology, how animals handle low oxygen, turned out to be solid prep for the thin-margin business of stepping outside a spacecraft.
• July is a rare month, which makes the list short and sharp. Where October might give you a sprawling roster, July hands you a tight set of genuinely famous names, easier to remember and harder to share a birthday with.

So July-born space fans, the odds were against you. But the astronauts who made the cut are the kind of company worth keeping.

Sources: NASA biography of John H. Glenn, Jessica Meir — NASA, Harrison Schmitt — Wikipedia, Rick Husband — NASA biography, Scott E. Parazynski — Wikipedia, Bob Behnken — Space.com