She’s got the right stuff

At 30, she’s a rising star of molecular biology, known for researching dangerous viruses in the Congo. Now, ready for her next adventure, she is circling back to her first choice, leaving the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research to begin training today as an astronaut candidate.

Packing up her office on her last day in her Cambridge lab, she said studying viruses and exploring space aren’t so far apart.

“When you’re doing basic scientific work, it’s often driven by the desire to find a solution to a problem or to explore something because we think it’s going to impact living a better life,’’ she said. “I think space exploration is the same way.’’

She is joining the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at a critical juncture. The international space station, after years of assembly-related work, is poised to expand its scientific mission as it doubles its roster of on-board astronauts to six. But the US space program is at a crossroads. A committee appointed by President Obama recently signaled that human space exploration, from returning to the moon to touching down on Mars, is doubtful without massive spending boosts that it says should have been made years ago.

Born 10 years after the first men walked on the moon, Rubins’s life as a scientist has been propelled by the lure of discovery and the drive to benefit others. In high school, worried that becoming an astronaut wasn’t a realistic career path, she delved into biology so she could become a better peer educator about HIV. At the University of California, San Diego, and later at Stanford University, she pursued virology, joining a select group studying smallpox in labs at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That led her to the Congo and monkeypox, from the same family of viruses, whose spread among people is aggravated by poverty, civil war, and malnutrition.

Her lab at the Whitehead explored how viruses change genetically during a person’s infection and transmission from person to person. Instead of one virus, there is a cloud of slightly different viruses that she identified using highly sensitive gene-sequencing methods. Just as in HIV, targeting a single version of the monkeypox virus with one drug, instead of using a cocktail of antiviral agents, is likely to fail.

Some of her Whitehead work is being picked up by the lab of Dr. Pardis Sabeti, an assistant professor of genomics and infectious disease at Harvard. The two women met on what Sabeti called a “scientific blind date’’ set up by a mutual friend.

“I was smitten by the end of the lunch, just scientifically, completely enamored with her,’’ Sabeti said. “She’s just a superstar: very rock-solid, a deep, bold thinker, and creative.’’

Sabeti said that as soon as she heard Rubins was applying to NASA, she knew she would be picked.

After submitting her online application, Rubins was among 113 people invited to Houston in January out of 3,566 applicants, according to Duane Ross, manager for astronaut candidate selection and training. The 113 were then winnowed to 9.

Ross said NASA seeks people with impressive credentials and experience who can adapt to different situations and get along with others.

“If you met Kate, you probably got the impression she’s very easy to deal with and she probably would work well in a team environment,’’ he said.

Starting today, Rubins and the eight other American candidates will begin two years of training; two Japanese and two Canadian astronaut candidates will join them. They will learn land survival, water survival, and some flight training, depending on their backgrounds.

“A lot of the things that are elements of the job - flying, scuba diving, that kind of stuff - I do for fun anyways,’’ Rubins said.

The class will go to Russia to learn the language they will need to work with their partners. After the US space shuttles are retired next year, American astronauts will be ferried into space on Soyuz spacecraft. Training specific to the space station will take another 2 1/2 years for those who graduate to become astronauts, meaning it will be almost five years before they are mission-eligible.

Rubins compared conducting research in the Congo to doing science on the international space station.

“When you think about doing research out in the field, you have to think very carefully about how much weight you’re going to bring out there, what your power requirements are, what the size is of your devices to do these kinds of measurements,’’ she said. “These are the exact same things you think about when you’re putting science into space.’’

Astronauts themselves are often the research subjects in experiments to learn more about the effects of low gravity. Muscle atrophy and bone-density loss are well-known serious problems that are more urgent as missions to Mars lasting four years are contemplated, said Dava Newman, MIT aerospace engineering professor. Accelerated bone loss in space presents an opportunity for insights, and perhaps treatments, to benefit earthbound humans with osteoporosis as well as deep-space travelers.

Rubins is curious about why immunity is lower and why bacteria grow more dangerous in low gravity, but at this point, she says, she does not expect to be setting up her own experiments. Her job is to train, she said, and then contribute in space or on the ground in support of experiments.

“I’m a kid in a candy store,’’ she said. “I kind of think there’s not a bad thing to work on.’’