Houstonian set sights on moon— nowshe’s heading to space station
Shannon Walker was 4 years old when her parents took her into the backyard and pointed at the moon.
Neil Armstrong had made his historic first step, prompting a generation of children to proclaim that they, too, would become astronauts. But in Houston, Walker was the only child to follow through on that pledge.
“I just thought that sounded like the best thing ever,” Walker said. “And so ever since then, astronaut was always in the back of my mind.”
Walker was selected as NASA’s first Houston-born astronaut in 2004, and on Saturday she will take her second flight into space.
The Crew-1 mission is set to launch from Kennedy Space Center on Saturday at 6:49 p.m. CST. Walker will be joined by NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover as well as Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi. They will ride to the International Space Station on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft, which received NASA certification on Tuesday.
Earlier this year, SpaceX became the first company to own and operate a vehicle trusted to launch NASA astronauts into space. The May 30 launch of Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley was a test flight. Saturday will be the company’s first crew rotation flight as it begins more routine
launches to the International Space Station. The Crew-1mission will last six months.
“It’s ahuge change from the way NASA used todo business,” Walker said, “and that is interesting and fascinating and wonderful in my opinion.”
Growing up near NASA’s Johnson Space Center fed her ambitions to be an astronaut. And it felt more attainable in high school, when Walker learned the most recent astronaut class had a person with two master’s degrees who was working toward a doctorate.
“I thought to myself, ‘Two master’s degrees. I can do that,’ ” Walker said.
She graduated from Rice University in1987 with a bachelor’s degree in physics, spent nearly three years working at NASA’s Johnson Space Center as a robotics flight controller for the space shuttle, and then returned to Rice to round out her astronaut credentials: earning a master’s and doctorate in space physics in 1992 and 1993, respectively. Her thesis was an analysis of how solar wind affected the atmosphere of Venus.
“She finished her master’s and Ph.D. in three years. It’s pretty amazing,” said Umbe Oliveira-Cantú, the department operations administrator for Rice University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. An average student would take five to six years to do that.
Oliveira-Cantú described Walker as hardworking and focused on her studies. She also praised Walker for inspiring others. On her upcoming visit to space, Walker will record a video that can be shown at an annual festival encouraging girls to study science.
But obtaining a master’s and doctorate alone wasn’t the golden ticket for becoming an astronaut. Walker spent years developing expertise in a variety of positions at NASA.
She worked with NASA’s international partners to design, build and integrate robotics hardware for the International Space Station. That was followed by a oneyear stint in Russia, where she helped integrate U.S. and Russian avionics, such as computers, for the space station.
She returned to Houston and led a group responsible for the technical health of the space station; the teamthat figured out how to get hardware or software back up and running if something went wrong.
Meanwhile, Walker continued applying to be an astronaut. It was her fifth time — she made it to the final stages five times over 14 years — that Walker was accepted.
“You could be the most qualified person in your field, but if they’re not looking for the flavor of person that you are, you will still not be selected,” Walker said. “And that means maybe sometimes we need more test pilots, and so they’ll take more test pilots than scientists. Or maybe sometimes we want to increase our medical expertise within the astronaut office, so they’ll hire more medical doctors as opposed to Ph.D. doctors.”
Walker was NASA’s first Houston-born astronaut. Loral O’Hara — whowas born in Houston, spent her early years in Missouri City and then moved to Sugar Land for middle and high school — was selected as the agency’s second local astronaut in 2017.
“Only a very small percentage of the people who apply are ultimately selected, so there aren’t large concentrations of astronauts born in any specific city,” NASA said in a statement. “That said, we’re glad to have Shannon Walker and Loral O’Hara representing Johnson Space Center’s hometown!”
After completing astronaut candidate training in 2006, Walker’s first spaceflight was on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2010. She spent 163 days in microgravity.
This time, she’s launching from the U.S.
“I had experiences that I never would have gotten had I flown on the shuttle, but I did launch out of a foreign country,” Walker said. “And so now being able to launch in my home country is really special.”
Another big difference is the global pandemic. NASA announced Walker as part of the Crew-1 mission in late March, when COVID-19 had brought the country to a grinding halt.
In an April interview, Walker said the astronauts were figuring out what training could be done remotely and what needed to be done in person. Suiting up a crew member for his or her spacewalk, for instance, falls squarely in the second category.
“Training is very interesting and very fluid these days aswe feel our way through our current situation in the world,” Walker said.
They eventually settled into a training routine. Behnken and Hurley told them what to expect, from the sounds during fueling to the bestway to live in Crew Dragon while traveling to and from the space station — where to pack the food, where to put sleeping bags, how to deal with trash.
On Saturday, Walker will have waited 10 years to return to space. She’s looking forward to floating, but mostly she’s excited for the views.
“It just sounds so cliché,” Walker said, “but truly looking at the Earth and looking out at the universe is such a wonderful and fascinating thing. And so I’m really looking forward to that again.”
“Only a very small percentage of the people who apply are ultimately selected, so there aren’t large concentrations of astronauts born in any specific city.”
NASA statement