Iowa native Peggy Whitson will be inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame this spring, recognizing her near-four decades of work at NASA and her continued career at Axiom Space.
Six-time shuttle astronaut Curt Brown is executive director of the Hall of Fame, based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Brown says Whitson is America’s most experienced astronaut and deserves this honor.
“She did three long-duration missions. She commanded two of the International Space Station expeditions. She did a gob of spacewalks, I think 10 spacewalks or so, and then she was actually chief of the astronaut office. We call it the chief astronaut,” Brown says. “And even now, after she left NASA, she’s working with Axiom. She’s flown with them once, and she’s going to fly with them again as an astronaut.”
Whitson, who grew up on a farm near Beaconsfield, is scheduled to command another two-week Axiom mission to the International Space Station this year, though a launch date hasn’t been released. She’ll command an international crew of four, with the other three astronauts hailing from India, Poland and Hungary. So far, Brown says Whitson’s spent 675 days in orbit — and counting.
“She’s wide open. She has more time in space than any other woman astronaut, and she has the most time in space of any American astronaut,” Brown says. “So, she’s one of the most deserving folks I know to be inducted in the Hall of Fame.”
Astronauts are typically lauded as American heroes with parades and all sorts of accolades, like having schools or bridges named after them, so Brown was asked how big of a deal it is to be reach the Astronaut Hall of Fame. Brown was inducted in 2013.
“I think it’s one of the greatest things that happened in my career,” Brown says. “You know, these are all your peers that vote you into this. So, it’s quite an honor to receive that kind of praise or that kind of recognition from your peers, your leaders, your subordinates, the whole group that was part of the shuttle program or the astronaut program.”
Whitson decided to become an astronaut after watching the first moon landing on television as a child in 1969. She will turn 65 on February 9th.
There will be a gala Hall of Fame event to induct Whitson, and fellow astronaut Bernard Harris, at the Kennedy Visitor Complex on May 31st, beneath the retired Space Shuttle Atlantis. The space center draws one-and-a-half million visitors a year, and Brown says Whitson will become part of a permanent display.
“In the Heroes and Legends Hall, you’ll see a big plaque of Peggy with her likeness, and then all her mission patches and a short recap of her career at NASA,” Brown says.
Since 1990, the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, which oversees the Hall of Fame, has provided more than nine-million dollars in college scholarships to hundreds of promising STEM students.
Hear Matt Kelley’s full interview with veteran space shuttle astronaut Curt Brown below: