A former
off-road racer-turned-spaceship commander and a U.S. Air Force test pilot are
ready to guide NASA's shuttle Atlantis to the International Space Station
(ISS).
Veteran
shuttle astronaut Rick "CJ" Sturckow is commanding Atlantis' shuttle mission to
deliver new solar arrays to the ISS with first-time spaceflyer Lee "Bru"
Archambault in the pilot's seat. The two astronauts
and their STS-117 five crewmates are due to launch spaceward June 8 from NASA's
Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
"I
think the number one thing I'm looking forward to is getting the job done,"
Sturckow told reporters in a preflight interview. "I look forward to
getting up there again."
From
off-road to off-planet
A colonel
in the U.S. Marine Corps, Sturckow hails from Lakeside, California, where he
grew up on a nearby ranch with his family to raise turkeys, cattle and,
eventually, trees.
"It
was a pretty, small, rural town at the time," Sturckow, 45, said of his
hometown, views of which he's caught from space during past missions along with
the rest of California and Baja California. "I used to race down there. I
was able to see all that from orbit. It was beautiful."
In fact, it
was racing that put Sturckow on the path to space. At age 16, he started work
as a truck mechanic and lube boy, then graduated to off-road and stock car
racing in a car he built while at California Polytechnic State University in San Louis Obispo where he earned a bachelor's of science degree in mechanical
engineering.
A Marine
Corps pilot-turned university professor suggested Sturckow's talents would
prove useful should he join the Marines as a pilot.
"And I
did. It's been great," Sturckow said.
Sturckow
has logged more than 4,790 hours in over 50 different aircraft and flew 41
combat missions during Operation Desert Storm in 1990. He earned his test pilot
wings in 1992 before moving to Houston and NASA, and is married to wife
Michele.
An avid
flyer with an interest in physical training, Sturckow joined NASA's astronaut
ranks in 1994 and to-date has spent about 24 days working in space.
"I
think that the human exploration is very important to maintain the interest of
all of us Americans in space exploration," Sturckow has said. "It's
great to send robots and orbiters and do some limited surface exploration, but
till you put a human on that other body, you're not going to know what it's
really like there."
Sturckow is
veteran of two ISS-bound shuttle flights -- including Endeavour's STS-88 mission
in 1998, the first orbiter flight dedicated to station construction -- where
he served as pilot. His second flight, STS-105
aboard Discovery, launched ferried cargo and a new crew to the ISS in 2001.
Atlantis'
STS-117 flight, however, marks Sturckow's first mission as commander and he has
applied lessons learned under his past commanders to meet the task.
"It's
about the people, and understanding what their job is and who to ask for
different kinds of help," Sturckow said of a shuttle commander's role.
The
Atlantis commander added that he hopes NASA's plans for future Moon missions
lead to permanent settlements beyond Earth orbit.
"I'd
love to see in my lifetime a lunar colony established," Sturckow said in a
NASA interview. "Not just a small station but a real group of people that
are living and working toward that next goal and the next step beyond."
Test
pilot aims for orbit
While
Sturckow is gearing up for his third trip to space, Archambault is eagerly
looking ahead to his first shuttle
flight to orbit.
A U.S. Air
Force colonel by training, Archambault will serve as both shuttle pilot and
orbiter robotic arm operator during Atlantis' STS-117 mission. He holds
bachelor's and master's degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering
from the University of Illinois-Urbana, and has three children with wife Kelly
Renee.
Archambault,
46, joined the U.S. Air Force in 1985 and flew a number of aircraft including
the F-117A Stealth Fighter, in which he flew 22 combat missions between 1990
and 1991 during the Gulf War. He later served as an instructor pilot and test
pilot to aid aircraft weapons development before joining NASA's astronaut ranks
in June 1998.
"It's
been a long time, and we're certain it's going to be worth the wait,"
Archambault told reporters of the upcoming launch in a preflight interview.
Archambault's
interest in NASA and spaceflight is rooted in his home town of Bellwood, Illinois, the same city where Eugene Cernan -- the last astronaut to walk on the Moon in
1971 -- grew up.
"He
generated a lot of interest in the space program in our home town,"
Archambault said in a NASA interview. "I have to believe that a lot of my
personal interest in the space program came from growing up in Bellwood where Eugene Cernan was the main deal back in the 1960s and 1970s."
There is
inherent risk in human spaceflight, but Archambault stressed that police officers,
firefighters and U.S. soldiers currently engaged overseas face dangerous jobs
on a daily basis, which puts his own mission challenges in perspective.
"You know, I don't think about the danger part of it too
often," Archambault said. "If we're going to continue to be who we
are as Americans and explore beyond the confines of our country, beyond the
confines of our world, we're going to have to take some risk."
That risk,
Archambault believes, is worth the effort of NASA and its partners to
complete the International Space Station's
construction push further outwards back towards the Moon.
"It's
an honor to be here and simply put, that's all I can say on that,"
Archambault said. "We're going to leave this planet; we're going to go
back to the Moon."
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