Shortly after midnight on April 8, Kim launched aboard a Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky.

A little over three hours later, the trio docked at the orbital laboratory around 5 a.m. the same day, boarding the ISS two hours later to join the Expedition 72/73 crew.

A video taken aboard the ISS captured the moment Kim was welcomed aboard the space station.

For the next eight months, the NASA flight engineer will assist in scientific research intended to benefit future space missions and people on Earth.

Kim's research includes observing the flammability of certain materials in microgravity and testing new space-related technologies.

Becoming an astronaut is a popular career aspiration for children, but Kim said he didn't have a dream job until he turned 16 and was drawn to serving in the Navy.

"As a kid, I did not have really any dreams until I was 16 years old, and I heard about Naval Special Warfare and the kinds of things that Naval Special Warfare operators do," Kim said in an interview with the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Emergency Medicine.

"That was really the first time, when I was 16, that I actually had a vision and a dream and felt that I was called to do something," he continued. "I never once thought I could be a physician, or an astronaut, or anything else."

When Kim, a Korean-American born to immigrant parents, told his mother about his decision to enlist, he said she tearfully urged him to reconsider.

"My mother, with tears in her eyes, [said], 'It's not too late; you can come home, and we'll do this family business,'" Kim told Business Insider in 2020. "And for a fleeting moment, I considered it."

But Kim said, "There wasn't anyone or anything to talk me out of it. It was the first time I set my sights on a dream."

After graduating from high school in 2002, Kim enlisted as a seaman recruit in the Navy, later completed Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training, and was assigned to SEAL Team 3.

As a Special Warfare Operator, Kim participated in more than 100 combat missions as a combat medic, navigator, sniper, and point man, receiving the Bronze Star, Silver Star, and other service awards.

The decorated Navy SEAL said serving in the military was "a very growing experience" that helped him find his identity, build confidence, and "see challenges for what they are and be able to draw off the strength to overcome."

"Going into the Navy was the best decision I ever made in my life because it completely transformed that scared boy who didn't have any dreams to someone who started to believe in himself," Kim said in a Q&A published by the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

Kim's combat experiences — particularly when he provided medical aid to his injured teammates and observed other medical doctors saving "lives and limbs" — are what led him to become an emergency medicine physician after serving in the Iraq War.

In his mid- to late 20s, Kim earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of San Diego and a medical degree from Harvard Medical School. He then completed a Harvard-affiliated internship in emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

While in medical school, Kim said physician-astronaut Scott Parazynski "opened up my eyes to NASA and its mission," which resonated with him much like Naval Special Warfare did a decade earlier.

"It really struck a chord with me, of going to the unknown of space and overcoming these impossible challenges, with technology we had not yet developed," Kim said in the medical journal interview.

Kim added that he was especially drawn to the idea that he "would have a chance to inspire young children who may be in tough situations as kids."

Kim was among a record number of people who applied to become astronauts in 2016. The rigorous application process included a range of mental and medical tests, including ECGs, blood draws, a chest radiograph, and a multiple-choice personality and behavioral test.

While Kim said he couldn't go into the specifics of the interview process, he said one of the rounds of interviews included team-oriented games and evaluations with behavioral specialists to see "how you react to stress and interactions with your team members, all of whom I had never met before."

While he was shopping at the grocery store the following year, Kim said he got a call from NASA that he would be one of 12 new astronaut candidates selected from a pool of over 18,300 applicants.

Kim said he "just couldn't foresee" getting selected among "so many amazing people who apply for this job." Most applicants don't get in on their first application, which he said initially made him feel "survivorship guilt" upon hearing the decision until he thought back to his time in the Navy.

"We have a saying in the [SEAL] teams — it's 'earn your Trident every day,'" Kim told Business Insider in 2020, referring to the insignia that Navy SEALs wear after earning their special warfare certification. "What that means is that you have to earn your right to be where you are every single day."

"I take that to heart when I think of this job," he said.

After joining the new class of astronaut candidates in 2017, Kim embarked on a two-year-long training program, in which he learned how to operate on-board systems and robotics on ISS simulators, received physiological and expeditionary training, and practiced space walk procedures in NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Johnson Space Center in Houston.

He also trained in field geology and water and wilderness survival, became proficient in Russian, and even completed a solo flight as a pilot on a Navy T-6 trainer aircraft.

In 2020, Kim graduated from astronaut boot camp and supported ISS expeditions before serving on his first space mission aboard the space station this year. But it likely won't be Kim's last time in space — he was also selected as an astronaut on NASA's Artemis moon-landing missions.

He said he credits his success as a NASA astronaut to "an extraordinary team of dedicated individuals who truly care."

"It's not the rockets, planes, satellites, or science that define this agency," Kim wrote in a post on X a day before launching to the ISS, "it's the remarkable individuals who bring it all to life — always has been, and always will be."

The new season of "The Last of Us" is comprised of seven episodes and adapts part of the video game "The Last of Us Part II."

Season two picks up five years after the events of the first season, with Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey reprising their roles as Joel and Ellie, respectively. New cast members include Kaitlyn Dever, Danny Ramirez, and Jeffrey Wright.

Streaming on: Max

The sixth and final season of the gripping drama series starring Elisabeth Moss kicks off with a three-episode premiere followed by a weekly drop until the finale on May 27.

Streaming on: Hulu

Season seven of Charlie Brooker's trippy, satirical sci-fi series features six episodes, including a sequel to the season four episode "USS Callister" that starred Cristin Milioti and Jesse Plemons.

The robust cast list for season seven includes Milioti, Will Poulter, Emma Corrin, Paul Giamatti, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Issa Rae.

Streaming on: Netflix

The 10-episode fourth season centers on Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) butting heads while trying to develop Deborah's new late night show.

Streaming on: Max

Ncuti Gatwa returns as the time-traveling Doctor, this time trying to help a woman named Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) return to Earth.

Streaming on: Disney+

The finale follows Khloé Kardashian as she travels to London for the launch of her fragrance, XO Khloé, and shows the famous family celebrating Kim Kardashian's birthday.

Streaming on: Hulu

The latest season of David Letterman's Netflix talk show continues with a candid conversation with WNBA star Caitlin Clark.

Streaming on: Netflix

The 2021 rom-com, based on Sally Thorne's best-selling book of the same name, stars Lucy Hale as Lucy Hutton and Austin Stowell as Joshua Templeton, two bickering coworkers competing for the same highly coveted job promotion at a publishing company. Their rivalry, of course, turns to romance and the work enemies start falling for each other.

Streaming on: Netflix

The docuseries digs into the dangers of being a young influencer, the exploitation of kid influencers like Piper Rockelle and her friends, and allegations leveled against Rockelle's momager, Tiffany Smith.

Streaming on: Netflix

Fictional US president Danielle Sutton (Viola Davis) springs into action and fights back when she's targeted by terrorists at a G20 summit in Cape Town, South Africa.

The film costars Anthony Anderson and "The Boys" favorite Antony Starr, who plays another daunting villain in this political action thriller.

Streaming on: Prime Video

After getting fired and divorcing his wife, hedge fund manager Andrew Cooper (Jon Hamm) turns to a life of crime, stealing from the homes of his wealthy neighbors and uncovering secrets about them in the process.

The series, which scored an early renewal back in November, premieres with two episodes this week, followed by one new episode weekly leading up to the finale on May 30.

Streaming on: Apple TV+

The ship's size, its famous passengers, the unfathomable loss of life, and the harrowing tales from survivors instantly made it headline news.

Interest in the disaster continued, especially in 1985 when Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel found the shipwreck during a secret US Navy mission.

It's far too fragile to raise. Artifacts and small pieces of the ship have been recovered, but the rusting remains will stay on the ocean floor.

It's risky and expensive to visit the shipwreck — five people died when a submersible visiting the Titanic imploded in June 2023 — and conditions are murky at that depth. The digital twin offers an ultra-clear view that's impossible to see from a submersible.

Two submersibles, Romeo and Juliet, spent three weeks photographing and measuring the ship and the debris surrounding the two halves. The digital model is made up of the images and scans to reveal areas of the ship that are hard to view from trips to the wreck.

Other techniques have been used to create photo mosaics of the Titanic, but this photogrammetry process captured every inch of the wreck — down to its rivets — and its surroundings without losing resolution or details.

"You can zoom right into an area of interest, right down to a floor tile on the ocean floor," Stephenson told BI. "It is amazing."

Stephenson, who appears in the documentary, has viewed the Titanic a few times from crewed and uncrewed submersibles. He said that in person, it's difficult to see much of the ship through a 7-inch viewport. That meant he was glimpsing the ship section by section instead of as a whole. "What you really need to make sense of all this evidence is context," he said.

"It's how it's all put together and presented as a whole that's the paradigm shift here," Stephenson said. "That's what's going to be the future of deep ocean exploration."

Crew member Frederick Fleet described hitting the iceberg as a narrow shave, thinking they'd avoided disaster. Many passengers didn't realize the ship had struck anything. Yet the collision was deadly.

The Titanic's builders designed the ship to withstand four of its 16 compartments flooding. Edward Wilding, a naval architect who worked on the design, speculated from the beginning that the iceberg scraping alongside the ship punctured more than four sections. Enough water flowed in to pull down the entire ship.

The portion of the ship that struck the iceberg slammed into the seafloor when it sank. It's now buried in mud. Even if it were visible, it would likely be difficult to tell the difference between the damage before and after sinking.

For the documentary, researchers from University College London and Newcastle University put together a simulation to find some potential answers. Using the ship's blueprints and estimated speed, they found that the iceberg may have torn open an 18-square-foot gash along six compartments, enough to take down the Titanic.

The simulation aligned very closely with Wilding's speculations from over 100 years ago.

"He really knew that ship," Anthony Geffen, the film's producer, told BI, which is perhaps why they match so well.

With much of the bow sunk in the mud, we may never know the full story of the iceberg's effect, Stephenson said.

In Cameron's movie, the ship basically cracks in half. Passenger Jack Thayer later wrote that part of the ship rose into the sky and seemed to hang there, and then, "with the deadened noise of the bursting of her last few gallant bulkheads, she slid quietly away from us into the sea."

"Even Jim Cameron, today, will say that the way he depicted it in the movie is not correct," Stephenson said. It was based on what was known in 1997, which was eyewitness testimony, like Thayer's.

The way it broke apart may have been far more explosive. The model shows large pieces of the hull scattered around the wreck that may be evidence of such an event.

"It was a giant, catastrophic fracture," metallurgist Jennifer Hooper said in the documentary, which caused a domino effect of compression and buckling that destroyed roughly 20% of the ship.

That might explain why the two large sections of the ship are a third of a mile apart, Geffen said. "Something massive must have happened," he said. "It didn't just float apart."

Before the ocean liner disappeared under the water, survivors recalled its lights still being on. The model gives a clear view of boiler room two. That's likely where the Titanic engineers stayed until the end, shoveling coal to keep the ship illuminated and the wireless transmitting calls for help.

Further away, a valve can be seen in the open position, indicating that steam continued flowing to generate electricity.

"These boilers tell us about a very personal story about the people" who stayed behind on the ship, Geffen said.

First-class passengers John Jacob Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim, two of the wealthiest men on the boat, both lost their lives — the documentary revealed that the crumbling ship may have come apart right where the first-class cabins were located.

The crew's and passengers' possessions are scattered for miles around the Titanic. Researchers have been able to identify the owners' of some of them from these new images, and Geffen said AI could help find more.

For example, there's a shark tooth that seems to have been attached to a pocket watch belonging to a first-class passenger, Colonel John Weir.

The Titanic site is a graveyard, where hundreds of people lost their lives. "I think sometimes that gets lost," Geffen said, but their belongings can help tell their stories.

The new scans have frozen the Titanic in time. It's already covered in rusticles, the pointy structures created by deep-sea bacteria. As it continues to deteriorate, more evidence will be lost.

As well as being dangerous and expensive, some also consider visiting the site via submersible disrespectful. Geffen said there are plans to put the digital twin in simulators so people can do virtual dives to the wreck, instead. Eventually, people will be able to put on a VR headset and walk around the site.

"With this digital twin, we can now bring the entire Titanic wreck site up to the surface and make it available to everyone," Stephenson said.

"Titanic: The Digital Resurrection" premieres on National Geographic on April 11 and on Disney+ and Hulu on April 12.