Saying No to the Ordinary: Anna’s Path to Becoming Armenia’s First Analog Astronaut | The LIV Lab Episode 19 ft. Anna Harutyunyan

How do you carve your own path when the well-worn ones don’t fit?

For Anna Harutyunyan, the answer started with walking away. She stepped back from a corporate software career that didn’t excite her, held out for the right role in a competitive analog mission, and embraced the unknown until she became Armenia’s first analog astronaut.

Anna’s journey spans robotics engineering studies in Germany, leading a NASA EL Space engineering team, conducting cognitive performance research on astronauts, and training with international crews in Armenia, Poland, and Switzerland. She is also the founder of Rocket Space Academy, working to expand Armenia’s presence in the space sector, and host of the Mission Analog podcast, amplifying the work of analog astronauts worldwide.

In this episode, Anna shares how persisten ...