South Windsor-born Hathaway on astronaut list
Navy commander among NASA candidates
The anxious waiting that comes with a potential job offer is never easy. For Jack Hathaway, who was dealing with a shoddy connection at sea aboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, things were even more complicated.
Hathaway was under the flight deck in the ready room, preparing for a relaxing weekend. The call never came. Then he checked his email.
“Jack, you haven’t been answering your phone! Don’t worry, it’s not bad news,” read the email from the chief of the Astronaut Office at NASA, Reid Wiseman.
Once Hathaway, 39, a Connecticut native and commander in the U.S. Navy, finally got a line out of the ship, he learned he had been selected as a NASA astronaut candidate.
He is one of 10 individuals selected from a field of more than 12,000 applicants to join NASA’S first new class in four years.
“I’m excited, I’m a little bit nervous, I want to do well, I want to be part of the team,” Hathaway said. “I think mostly I’m just excited for the opportunity.”
Hathaway was not available for an interview with the Courant as he and his wife, Amy, and their two children prepared to relocate to Houston, but he documented his experience in a candidate interview with NASA.
Hathaway’s path to lower orbit and beyond began in South Windsor, where he was born to Donna and Jeff Hathaway. He described it as a quiet, normal suburban town with “not anything crazy going on there” — an understandable assessment for a pilot with 39 combat flight missions under his belt.
He remembers his time as a restless young student who
found it difficult to sit still or concentrate on subject areas that didn’t engage him. It was his third grade teacher who, in an effort to help Hathaway focus, ignited an interest in mathematics.
“She brought in a set of [puzzles] for me, a book of tangrams,” Hathaway said in the interview video. “I was so enthralled by this kind of mathematics, kind of geometry, kind of shape challenge problem of trying to visualize and solve.
“It got me excited about geometry and math and science. It was kind of my first step, I think, to being interested in that kind of education.”
While Hathaway’s penchant for math and problem solving blossomed, so did his knack for leadership: Hathaway attained the rank of Eagle Scout while part of Boy Scout Troop 186 in South Windsor.
Dreams of becoming an astronaut tend to fall away for other children with the passage of time, but Hathaway stayed committed. Hathaway decided to pursue a career as a Navy pilot in part because of the well-trodden path from sea to space following his graduation from South Windsor High School in 2000.
Hathaway received degrees in physics and history from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2004. He went on to earn a master’s of science in flight dynamics at Cranfield University, based in England and specializing in aeronautic studies, and a master’s in national security and strategic studies at the U.S. Naval War College.
Like most Navy pilots, Hathaway was a test pilot for about two years after graduation before he returned to the operational flight side.
He deployed aboard the USS Truman in support of Operation Inherent Resolve with Strike Fighter Squadron 136, and in 2019 was assigned to the Pentagon where we worked on tactical datalink operations.
Hathaway and the rest of his astronaut class could be assigned to myriad missions once they report for duty at Johnson Space Center in Houston in January for a two-year training period.
Missions could include research and development into commercial space travel in partnership with private companies, deep space missions or deployments to the Moon with the Artemis team.
The first thing Hathaway plans to do when he gets to outer space?
Unstrap, he said, and look out the spacecraft window.
“People talk about how awe-inspiring the vista of the Earth itself is,” Hathaway said. “I’m really excited to get out of that seat, float around a little bit, and just look out the window and appreciate how wonderful our planet Earth is.”
The process to becoming an astronaut is notoriously difficult, and NASA is highly selective. But astronauts come from all backgrounds, and there’s no one path that leads to the administration directly.
For young people dreaming of becoming part of the next generation of star sailors, as the Greek word translates to, Hathaway recommends becoming the best you can be at what you are passionate about.
“Be that type of person that excels at what they do, loves what they do, is passionate about what they do, and does it with other people,” Hathaway said. “Things will work out.”