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NASA, the American space administration, has launched its biggest recruitment drive for many years. It currently has 47 astronauts, compared to 149 in 2000 at the peak of the space shuttle era. We asked the former NASA astronaut Leland Melvin what exactly was the right stuff to make an astronaut? (Photo: Space Shuttle Atlantis crew member Mission Specialists Leland D. Melvin, Rex J. Walheim, ESA Astronaut Hans Schlegel of Germany, Stanley G. Love and ESA Astronaut General Leopold Eyhartsof France board a bus at the operations and checkout building February 7, 2008, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida) (Credit: Eliot J. Schechter/Getty Images)