Posted at 1:49 a.m., Thursday, July 19, 2007
Former astronaut at Kapolei Middle School today
Advertiser Staff
Former NASA astronaut and the first commander of the International Space Station Bill Shepherd will speak with approximately 400 Kapolei Middle School students at an assembly from 1:40 p.m. to 2:20 p.m. today.Shepherd is currently president of Trex Federal Systems, a division of Trex Enterprises Corporation. He is in Hawai'i to participate in aerospace activities marking the 38th anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the moon.
A former Navy SEAL, Shepherd became an astronaut and flew three flights as a mission specialist on the Space Shuttle Atlantis (1988), Discovery (1990), and Columbia (1992).
From 1993 to 1996, he was program manager and deputy program manager for the International Space Station, and in 1996 was selected as commander of the first crew to live aboard the ISS. He trained for four years in Russia before he and two cosmonauts boarded a Soyuz rocket to the ISS in 2000. After a 141-day, 58,000,000-mile mission, he returned to Florida on the Shuttle Discovery in 2001.
During the ISS mission in March 2001, four students, including two from Wai'anae High School, spoke with Shepherd via amateur radio as the space station passed over Hawai'i, a Department of Education news release said.
