For the six shuttle astronauts of NASA’s STS-115 mission, the message is clear: Go Navy! 

A full half of the six STS-115 spaceflyers – commander Brent Jett, pilot Chris Ferguson and mission specialist Joseph Tanner – are U.S. Navy aviators, with mission specialist Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper drawing on her background as a Navy diver to train for two of the mission’s three planned spacewalks.  As a commander in the U.S. Coast Guard, STS-115 spacewalker Daniel Burbank also has the nautical tradition at heart, while Canadian Space Agency astronaut Steve MacLean assures his family “was involved in shipbuilding, so that provides some bonding.” 

The six STS-115 astronauts are set to launch Wednesday at 12:28:46 p.m. EDT (1628:46 GMT) on a mission to resume construction of the International Space Station. They will install a 17.5-ton, $371.8 million pair of new trusses and solar arrays on the station’s port (again, naval tradition prevail) side.  The U.S. Navy has a history in NASA’s human spaceflight programs. 

The first American in space was all Navy – Commander Alan Shepard – when he rocketed spaceward aboard his Freedom 7 Mercury spacecraft.  Astronaut and U.S. Navy Lt. Commander James Lovell participated in the first manned mission around the Moon during NASA’s 1968 Apollo 8 flight and Naval aviator Neil Armstrong was the first human to set foot on the lunar surface one year later during Apollo 11. 

Two of NASA’s three Skylab space station crews were all-Navy and the first space shuttle flight – Columbia’s April 1981 mission – was crewed by Naval aviators John Young and Robert Crippen.  While NASA science officer Jeffrey Williams, an Army colonel, is currently serving as a flight engineer on the International Space Station’s Expedition 13 crew, the next U.S. astronauts to live aboard the orbital laboratory – Expedition 14 commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and flight engineer Sunita Williams – are also Navy to the core.    

 

“Isn’t that great,” Ferguson said with a smile in a preflight interview. “Better than a bunch of Air Force guys.”