Shuttle Commander, Record Spacewalker Chosen for Astronaut Hall of Fame

Col. Karol "Bo" Bobko (ret.) and Maj. Gen. Susan Helms are in the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame's 2011 class of inductees.
Col. Karol "Bo" Bobko (ret.) and Maj. Gen. Susan Helms are in the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame's 2011 class of inductees. (Image credit: NASA)

A space shuttle commander who flew two orbiters' maiden flights and a spacewalker who set a duration record working outside the International Space Station (ISS) will be inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in Florida this May.

Col. Karol "Bo" Bobko (ret.) and Maj. Gen. Susan Helms have been confirmed as inductees by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that oversees the Hall of Fame's annual selections. The two veteran space shuttle fliers will be added to the 77 spaceflyers honored in the Astronaut Hall of Fame since 1990, including all of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo program pioneers.

An induction ceremony is scheduled for May 7 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, which the Astronaut Hall of Fame is a part. The event follows by two days the 50th anniversary of first American astronaut — and Hall of Fame inductee

Alan Shepard's historic 1961 flight, which lifted off from a nearby Cape Canaveral launch pad.

The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation will host a gala in Bobko's and Helms' honor on on May 6, with many of the Hall's prior inductees expected to attend.

A veteran of three spaceflights including the first missions for the space shuttles Challenger and Atlantis, Karol "Bo" Bobko was first chosen to fly in space in 1966, but not by NASA.

Bobko was recruited to train as an astronaut for the military's own space station program. He was a member of the first class to graduate from the U.S. Air Force Academy and later attended the Aerospace Research Pilots School at the Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Bobko would have flown on board the Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), performing reconnaissance among other activities, had the project not been canceled in 1969.

In the intervening 14 years, Bobko served in support roles including the Skylab Medical Experiments Altitude Test (SMEAT), a 56-day simulation of a space station mission, and on support crews for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and the space shuttle Enterprise's Approach and Landing Test flights.

Bobko finally launched on his maiden mission in 1983 on the first flight of space shuttle Challenger, NASA's second orbiter to fly. Filling the pilot seat for the five-day STS-6 mission, he and his crewmates accomplished the shuttle program's first spacewalk and deployed the first Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, TDRS-1.

Bobko's second flight was his first serving as commander. Launched in April 1985, STS-51D was shuttle Discovery's fourth flight and marked the first time a sitting member of Congress, Senator Jake Garn, flew in space. The seven day mission deployed two satellites and included the first unscheduled spacewalk to activate a switch on one of the two satellites.

Bobko's third and final mission marked the introduction of NASA's fourth shuttle, Atlantis, to spaceflight. STS-51J in October 1985 was the second mission dedicated solely to Department of Defense activities, including the deployment of two satellites. The classified mission was just four days in duration.

Bobko retired from NASA and the Air Force in 1988 to join private industry. He held positions at Booz Allen Hamilton and later Spacehab before joining Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in 2005, where he serves as program manager for NASA's Ames Research Center's Simulation Laboratories.

Stationed in space — in orbit and on the ground

A year before arriving with Discovery's STS-102 mission to live on the space station, Helms visited the ISS with the crew of Atlantis' STS-101 mission together with her future Expedition 2 crewmates.

During the nearly 10 day flight — which featured the first orbiter to fly with a glass cockpit — Helms and her fellow crew members outfitted the space station with supplies. [Photos: Building Space Shuttle Discovery]

Helms' third space mission also helped prepare her and NASA for living and working aboard the International Space Station. The longest shuttle mission as of 1996, Columbia's STS-78 crew flew with the fifth Spacelab dedicated to studying the effects of long duration spaceflight on human physiology.

On her first flight, shuttle Endeavour's STS-54 mission in 1993, Helms and her four fellow crew members deployed the fifth Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, TDRS-F.

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Robert Z. Pearlman
collectSPACE.com Editor, Space.com Contributor

Robert Pearlman is a space historian, journalist and the founder and editor of collectSPACE.com, a daily news publication and community devoted to space history with a particular focus on how and where space exploration intersects with pop culture. Pearlman is also a contributing writer for Space.com and co-author of "Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space” published by Smithsonian Books in 2018.

In 2009, he was inducted into the U.S. Space Camp Hall of Fame in Huntsville, Alabama. In 2021, he was honored by the American Astronautical Society with the Ordway Award for Sustained Excellence in Spaceflight History. In 2023, the National Space Club Florida Committee recognized Pearlman with the Kolcum News and Communications Award for excellence in telling the space story along the Space Coast and throughout the world.