How much astronauts get paid?

NASA's civilian astronauts are federal employees. They are hired, graded and paid like other government professionals, on the government-wide General Schedule, with the grade for a given selection set out in the vacancy announcement and the final figure adjusted by the locality rate for the Houston area, where the Johnson Space Center and the training facilities sit. Increases come from grade and step progression and from taking on more responsibility, not from flying. There is no bonus for a launch, none for a spacewalk and none for commanding a mission: an assignment changes the work, not the pay cheque.

A large share of every NASA class arrives from the armed forces. Those astronauts are detailed to NASA and stay on their service's pay and allowances, so two people strapped into adjacent seats can be paid under entirely different systems. European astronauts are staff members of ESA and sit on the agency's own grade structure; Japanese and Canadian crew members are employees of JAXA and the Canadian Space Agency. Astronauts flying for private operators are compensated under commercial contracts that are not published, and paying passengers, of course, are not paid at all.

The salary is only part of the package. Federal astronauts receive standard civil-service benefits — health insurance, the federal retirement system, paid leave — and the same travel allowances as any other employee on assignment, a rule that has produced some famously modest expense claims for journeys to the Moon. Set against years of training, relocation, long deployments abroad and real risk, the pay is unremarkable next to that of airline captains or senior engineers in industry, and applicants know it before they apply.