First native Houstonian astronaut prepares for summer launch

Corey Benson

The Signal Staff

Photo courtesy of NASA

While every astronaut has lived in Houston at one time or another during his or her career, only one is from the city. This summer the first native Houstonian will go into space.

Astronauts Shannon Walker and Douglas Wheelock and cosmonaut Fyodor Nikolayevich Yurchikhin will join three crewmembers already aboard the International Space Station this summer, where they will stay for six months.

Walker, who will serve as flight engineer of the Soyuz for Expedition 24/25, is the first person born and educated in Houston to serve as a crewmember on board a spacecraft.  

“I found out a few years ago when reading the fact book that there were no native Houstonian astronauts,” Walker said. “With as big as Houston is and as good of schools as it has, I was surprised to find there were no other astronauts from the city.”

Walker began her career in space science as a flight controller in 1987. Before her selection as an astronaut candidate, she was acting manager of the NASA On-Orbit Engineering Office.

“Our job was much like a scene in the movie Apollo 13,” Walker said. “We had to make a round one of those fit a square one of these. It was out of that experience that I was selected for this job.”

Space Shuttle Discovery will be decommissioned later this year and will be the last space shuttle to fly when it is launched on the STS-133 mission, which is scheduled for Sept. 16. The Expedition 24 crew will be in aboard the ISS when Discovery is launched and as it returns eight days later.

“This expedition is bittersweet and ironic,” Walker said. “Through most of my life and my entire career, the human space flight program has been shuttle based, so not flying on the shuttle is a bit strange. But flying on Soyuz is a testament to our international partnerships and our partnership with Russia.”

Yurchikhin flew aboard STS-112 in Oct. 2002 on Space Shuttle Atlantis. This will be his third space flight.

“We are an example of how different peoples, countries and cultures work together,” Yurchikhin said. “Atlantis is like my first love; Canaveral is like my first kiss.”

Walker is taking with her into space a key to the city presented by Mayor’s Youth Council, a plaque to be put in Rice University Space Science and Technology Building and a collection of articles and photographs from the University of Houston College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics where her father, Robert Walker, was a professor of physics.

Walker will also take a watch worn by Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Joan Kerwin, director of The Ninety-Nines, an international organization of women pilots, presented the watch to Walker Oct. 22 at Ellington Field.

“It symbolizes what women have accomplished in aviation and what they can still accomplish,” Walker said.

The items will return aboard Discovery, which is scheduled for Sept. 16. She will present the items back to the groups from whom she received them when she returns in November.