NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick has always been an explorer.

Whether the Wheat Ridge native was exploring a new hiking trail in the Rocky Mountains or test flying a new naval aircraft, he’s always been curious about everything around him.

But in the near future, Dominick could have the chance to explore an even more remote area.

The moon.

On Dec. 9, NASA announced that 18 astronauts, including Dominick, were selected for its Artemis Team, whose goal is to return to the moon by 2024.

“You’ve dreamed about the moment when you get the call a lot, but this is the actual real moment. And it’s hard to capture in real words,” Dominick said.

Dominick joined NASA in 2017 along with fellow Coloradan and Artemis Team member Jessica Watkins after an extensive career in the Navy, where he logged more than 1,600 hours in the air in 28 different aircraft.

Watkins says Dominick’s curiosity and need to understand has propelled him to where he is today.

“What really strikes me about him is his innate desire to kind of tinker and really kind of understand how things work,” Watkins said.

“As a systems engineer, I think he’s just wired that way, he really wants to understand all the nuts and bolts of how things are made and how things are taken apart. He really brings that level of really wanting to understand and get to the bottom of any problems that we might face, he’s definitely somebody that I would love to fly with whether it’s to the moon or the International Space Station.”

Since transitioning to working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he’s been “tinkering” — along with is daily work routine and having lunch with his two daughters every chance he gets.

“I’ve been doing electronics and been soldering things, I’ve been building ridiculous Christmas light setups that I would never have conceived of before or (thought) not necessary. I’m always building to try and understand how things work,” Dominick said.

“COVID has driven all kinds of different behaviors (and my) tinkering has gone through the roof,” Dominick said.

Dominick lives with his wife and two daughters in Texas. After 15 years in the Navy and living near the coast, he said the thing he misses the most about Colorado is exploring the mountains.

“It’s really cool to get up far enough in the mountains where you don’t have cellphone coverage, and you don’t have the ability to (endlessly scroll) with all the apps and be like,’Where’d the last 20 minutes go?’ (I like) going to the mountains to get away from cellphone coverage and just go (exploring),” Dominick said.

Dominick declined to give his go-to hiking trails but encouraged anyone interested to try and find him.

“It’s in a very remote place and I hope it stays that way,” he said. “Go find it, go find both places. If I tell you where to go, I don’t want you to go, I want you to explore.”

But above everything else, Dominick wants Coloradans to know one thing.

“Lets go to the moon. Let’s go, whatever the people of Earth put their minds to, we’ll go do it,” he said. “When we put our minds to it as a species, we’re going to go. Let’s not get distracted by (small) things, let’s go accomplish big things.”