Astronaut Scholar Captain Trent Kingery was deployed in January 2006 for seven months to Al Asad, Iraq for his second combat tour with the United States Navy. During this deployment, he flew 354 combat hours and 113 combat sorties while providing “on-call” Close Air Support to ground forces. In June 2006, he surpassed the 1,000 FA-18 flight hour mark. Upon returning from his combat deployment in late August, Kingery accepted orders to become a member of the acquisition community at NAVAIR, Patuxent River, Maryland. Trent was assigned to the V-22 Program Office. He is currently pursuing Level I certification in Test & Evaluation, Program Management and Systems Engineering from the Defense Acquisition University (DAU). Kingery received the Astronaut Scholarship at North Carolina State University in 1998–99.