Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame to induct two this week
The Kennedy Space Center’s next Hall of Fame induction ceremony will have a decidedly international flair.
Ellen Ochoa, the first Hispanic woman in space, and Michael Foale, the first British citizen to perform a spacewalk, will join the list of 95 astronauts featured at the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame this month. The ceremony begins at 1 p.m. on Friday at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex near the museum’s high-profile Space Shuttle Atlantis.
It will include remarks from Therrin Protze, the visitor complex’s chief operating officer, along with astronaut and Kennedy Space Center director Bob Cabana.
Ochoa, 58, has been director of Johnson Space Center in Houston since 2012. She first went into space aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1993 and logged nearly 1,000 hours in space.
Foale, 60, is an astrophysicist who traveled into space on six Space Shuttle missions. In 1995, Foale also traveled into space aboard the shuttle Discovery on a mission that included a four-hour, 39-minute spacewalk.
Both Ochoa and Foale are expected to be at the ceremony, along with more than 20 other astronauts.
This year’s class will be the first inducted at the hall of fame’s new venue at the visitor center. The U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame moved in November, joining KSC’s Heroes and Legends attraction that features assorted space relics displayed in 12-foot-tall pods are inspired by the interior of space shuttles — and a 3-D movie that’s shown in a “225-degree, cinematic, inverted dome.”