Former UH scientist to orbit
By Timothy Hurley
Advertiser Staff Writer
Former University of Hawai'i astrophysicist Ed Lu will be the first American to fly into space following the Columbia space shuttle catastrophe.
The 39-year-old astronaut was named by NASA yesterday to the two-man team that will replace the crew of the international space station. Lu will join cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko in an April 26 launch of the Russian Space Agency's Soyuz capsule at Kazakhstan.
Ed Lu will bring macadamia nuts and Kona coffee into space.
Lu and Malenchenko were scheduled to fly to the space station last month aboard the shuttle Atlantis, but the Feb. 1 Columbia disaster that killed seven astronauts grounded NASA's three remaining shuttles.
Although he was born and reared on the East Coast and lived in Hawai'i only three years, Lu, a former assistant wrestling coach at Punahou School, considers Honolulu one of his hometowns. The other is Webster, N.Y., where he graduated from high school in 1980.
Lu was a postdoctoral fellow at the UH Institute for Astronomy when he was selected for the 1995 astronaut class. He visited Russia's space station on his first mission in 1997.
He has always taken a part of Hawai'i into space with him, and this flight will be no exception. Lu's menu for his stay aboard the station includes macadamia nuts and Kona coffee.
