Iranian American Jasmin Moghbeli is selected by NASA for next generation of astronauts

The Marine Corps major, MIT graduate and college basketball player earned her fierce nickname Jaws during her time as a decorated helicopter gunship pilot who flew more than 150 missions in Afghanistan.

She and her brother were born in Germany to Iranian parents, architecture students who had fled their native country after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

But Moghbeli grew up in Baldwin, New York, which she considers her hometown - and her story after that reads like an immigrant's fairy tale.