CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA has selected four veteran astronauts to lead the way back into orbit from U.S. soil.
On Thursday, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden named the four who will fly on capsules built by private companies — SpaceX and Boeing. Each astronaut has test pilot experience and has flown twice in space.
The commercial crew astronauts are: Air Force Col. Robert Behnken, until recently head of the astronaut office; Air Force Col. Eric Boe, part of shuttle Discovery's last crew; retired Marine Col. Douglas Hurley, pilot of the final shuttle crew; and Navy Capt. Sunita Williams, a two-time resident of the International Space Station.
Williams spent part of her Navy career in Norfolk.
According to her biography, she was assigned to Helicopter Combat Support Squadron 8 in Norfolk with deployments to the Mediterranean, Red Sea and the Persian Gulf in support of Desert Shield and Operation Provide Comfort.
In September 1992, she was the Officer-in-Charge of an H-46 detachment sent to Miami, Florida for Hurricane Andrew Relief Operations onboard USS Sylvania. Williams was selected for United States Naval Test Pilot School and began the course in January 1993.
After graduation in December 1993, she was assigned to the Rotary Wing Aircraft Test Directorate as an H-46 Project Officer, and V-22 Chase Pilot in the T-2. While there, she was also assigned as the squadron Safety Officer and flew test flights in the SH-60B/F, UH-1, AH-1W, SH-2, VH-3, H-46, CH-53 and the H-57.
In December 1995, she went back to the Naval Test Pilot School as an Instructor in the Rotary Wing Department and the school's Safety Officer where she flew the UH-60, OH-6 and the OH-58. From there, she was assigned to the Norfolk-based USS Saipan as the Aircraft Handler and the Assistant Air Boss. Williams was deployed onboard Saipan when she was selected for the astronaut program.
"I think this is the next step in engineering development and research as we take our further steps out of low-Earth orbit into deeper space," Williams said after the announcement was made.
"These distinguished, veteran astronauts are blazing a new trail, a trail that will one day land them in the history books and Americans on the surface of Mars," Bolden said on his blog.
SpaceX and Boeing are aiming for test flights to the space station by 2017. It will be the first launch of astronauts from Cape Canaveral, Florida, since the space shuttles retired in 2011.
In the meantime, NASA has been paying Russia tens of millions of dollars per ride on Soyuz spacecraft to ferry astronauts; the latest tab is $76 million.
