A retired general and a sitting senator were honored by their peers as the latest inductees into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame.
Retired Major General Roy Bridges (U.S. Air Force) and Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) were hailed on Saturday (May 6) at a public ceremony (opens in recent tab) held under the display of the space shuttle Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. The 2 astronauts flew on other orbiters in NASA’s now grounded fleet, Bridges as pilot and Kelly as each pilot and commander.
“Roy flew the space shuttle after I was in college,” said Kelly, who was chosen with NASA’s sixteenth class of astronauts in 1996, 11 years after Bridges made his first and only spaceflight. “He loomed large inside the astronaut office.”
Related: Biography of former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly
“Mark and his twin brother got loads of notoriety as Scott was up on the space station for nearly a yr and so they [scientists] were attempting to see what space does to our human bodies. It was a fairly spectacular experiment,’ said Bridges, referring to the NASA Twins Study, which was the primary time scientists were capable of study similar siblings while one was in Earth orbit. (Scott Kelly was inducted (opens in recent tab) to the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2021.)
“I believe we’re still the one siblings which have flown into space — less you count the Bezos brothers,” said Kelly. Billionaire Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark became space tourists on the primary crewed suborbital flight of Blue Origin’s Recent Shepard launch vehicle in 2021.
Bridges and Kelly spoke individually with collectSPACE.com with about their entrance into the Astronaut Hall of Fame.
“I assumed the time had passed after I can be considered [for this honor] because I retired from NASA in 2005 and I only had the one spaceflight due to the Challenger mishap and getting recalled to the Air Force,” said Bridges.
A self-described “Improbable Astronaut” (the title of his autobiography (opens in recent tab)) on account of his upbringing in rural Georgia, Bridges’ first and only launch was on the eighth flight of the space shuttle Challenger, STS-51F, in July 1985. As pilot, it was as much as Bridges and commander Gordon Fullerton to execute the one abort to orbit within the shuttle program’s history after one in every of the orbiter’s three fundamental engines prematurely cutoff. Challenger made it safely into space but entered a lower-than-planned orbital altitude. Still, the crew carried out the flight’s objectives (opens in recent tab) successfully.
Following the lack of space shuttle Challenger in 1986, the Air Force reassigned Bridges to the primary in a series of leadership roles, including heading the most important test wing at Edwards Air Force Base in California, commanding the Eastern Space and Missile Center at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida and helming the Air Force Flight Test Center back at Edwards. After retiring from the Air Force, Bridges returned to NASA, serving as Kennedy Space Center director from 1997 to 2003 after which the director of Langley Research Center in Virginia from 2003 to 2005.
“I didn’t know the way much weight they might placed on my leadership activities, running large organizations,” said Bridges of the Hall of Fame nominations committee, a blue ribbon panel of inductees, retired flight controllers, historians and journalists overseen by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. “I just didn’t know whether or not they might consider those of their deliberations. Apparently they did.”
Kelly noted that his role as Senator could have played some role in his selection, too, but felt it was likely more about his accomplishments in space. Kelly is just the third astronaut to be elected to the U.S. Senate (opens in recent tab) and only the second sitting senator to be enshrined within the Hall of Fame after founding-member John Glenn.
“There aren’t loads of those who have made 4 trips to the space stations,” said Kelly. “I used to be also the last to command space shuttle Endeavour; I used to be the commander of the mission that brought up the Japanese laboratory, which I believe was the heaviest or one in every of the heaviest things ever flown on the orbiter; and I commanded the mission that launched the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer [AMS], which i believe was the most dear thing launched to the space station.”
“After we added AMS, it was considered assembly complete of the International Space Station, so I used to be the commander of the flight that finished off the space station,” Kelly said.
Kelly logged 54 days and two hours in space, flying on Endeavour’s STS-108 and STS-134 missions in 2001 and 2011, respectively, and on Discovery’s STS-121 and STS-124 flights in 2006 and 2008.
Five of Kelly’s former crewmates, including Mike Fossum and Ron Garan who flew with Kelly twice, were among the many greater than 30 astronauts attending Saturday’s ceremony. Pam Melroy, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame alongside Scott Kelly in 2021 and who today serves as NASA’s deputy administrator, introduced Kelly for induction.
One among Bridges’ crewmates, John David-Bartoe, was also on the ceremony, as was 2022 inductee David Leestma (opens in recent tab), who introduced Bridges.
“Dave Leestma lived in my neighborhood in Texas after we we at Johnson Space Center. I saw him often,” said Bridges.
Bridges and Kelly comprise the twenty fourth class (opens in recent tab) of Astronaut Hall of Fame inductees. Plaques bearing their glass-etched portraits and mission patches were revealed during Saturday’s ceremony and shall be hung alongside the 105 other honorees as a part of the Heroes & Legends attraction on the visitor complex.
“In a few months I will be 80 years old, so it’s sort of like a cap on my profession,” said Bridges. “It’s an important honor, having your peers recognize the belongings you did and consider them necessary enough to place you on stage with a U.S. senator.”
“It’s nice to be recognized by your colleagues and other astronauts on your profession,” said Kelly. “A bit little bit of me appears like everybody who climbs right into a rocket ought to be within the Astronaut Hall of Fame, but I do appreciate the popularity.”
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