Stargazing Guy

Follow for a weekly list of forthcoming astronaut* birthdays.

Maybe you share a birthday?!

If not, perhaps it will be you who adds your name to the list?!

If you do share a birthday, what does it mean to you?

Do you feel a connection, pride? They take to the skies (on controlled explosions) to improve the world, to explore (to travel to strange new worlds).

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11 September 1935 Gherman Titov (RKA), Russia. In May 1962, Soviet cosmonaut Titov, who completed the one-day Vostok 2 mission the previous August, visited the United States on a 12-day tour. During his stay in Washington, D.C., astronaut John H. Glenn , the first American to orbit the Earth aboard Friendship 7 a little more than two months earlier, served as his host, marking the first meeting between an American astronaut and a Soviet cosmonaut. The two also met with President John F. Kennedy at the White House.

11 September 1937 Robert Crippen (NASA), US. Crippen served as pilot on the first space shuttle orbital flight, launched on 12 April 1981. The airplane like craft landed on 14 April, after having orbited Earth 36 times. Crippen later commanded the second flight of the space shuttle Challenger. This flight (18-24 June 1983) included the first American woman in space, Sally Ride, and made Crippen the first to fly in two shuttle missions.

11 September 1967 Randolph Bresnik (NASA), US

12 September 1940 Roger Crouch (NASA), US

12 September 1966 Anousheh Ansari (Space Tourist), Iran. On 18 September 2006, 6 days after her 40th birthday, she became the first Iranian and first female Muslim in space. Ansari was the fourth overall self-funded space tourist, and the first self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station. But don’t call her a ‘space tourist’! She doesn’t like the term ‘space tourism’ or ‘space tourist’ because she feels that it doesn’t do justice to what they do as ‘spaceflight participants’ or explorers. You can read more about her flight, unexpected friendships and her aversion to being called a ‘space tourist’ in an interview she did with the European Space Agency.

14 September 1950 Huu-Chau Trinh (NASA), Vietnam. After flying aboard NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-50 in June 1992 as a payload specialist, biochemist Eugene H. Trinh became the first Vietnamese American astronaut in space and the second Vietnamese astronaut to explore the cosmos.

14 September 1958 John Herrington (NASA), US. Born in Chickasaw Nation, in 2002, Herrington became the first enrolled member of a Native American tribe to fly in space. During STS-113, the sixteenth Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station. Herrington performed three spacewalks, totalling 19 hours and 55 minutes. These spacewalks are commemorated on the reverse of the 2019 Sacagawea dollar coin.

15 September 1941 Mirosław Hermaszewski (IK), Poland. Polish pilot who was the first Pole in space on 27 June 1978 for over 7-days on Soyuz 30.

16 September 1956 Kevin R. Kregel (NASA), US

17 September 1930 Edgar Mitchell (NASA), US. The sixth man to walk on the Moon during Apollo 14 between 31 January and 9 February 1971. Mitchell was one of the first astronauts to talk about the overview effect. He was an odd duck, and certainly atypical of an astronaut. Mitchell was already interested in UFOs, research on human consciousness and other phenomena, and ESP. He even attempted to conduct a few telepathy experiments during the trans-Earth portion of his mission, never telling his crewmates until the media carried the story after the flight.

17 September 1930 Thomas P. Stafford (NASA), US. Stafford commanded Apollo 10, the first flight of the lunar module to the Moon. The crew of Apollo 10 hold the official record for the fasted manned vehicle when they reached 24,791 mph (39,897 km/h) relative to the Earth on 26 May 1969 during their return from lunar orbit.

17 September 1943 Samuel Durrance (NASA), US. Durrance, who as an astronomer was one of the first non-career astronauts to fly with NASA after the loss of space shuttle Challenger, died at the age of 79 on 5 May 2023.

17 September 1961 Pamela Melroy (NASA), US.

Thanks to www.supercluster.com for the bios and links.

Also, thanks to www.pillownaut.com for the list of birthdays.      

* = includes cosmonaut, taikonaut, parastronaut, spaceflight participant, space tourist, etc

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PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message with a date and time and we can share it, remotely, at the same time, and think about the Cosmos.

In the meantime, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else, too, because as Adam Smith said, “we naturally desire not only to be loved but to be lovely”.

Remember, hope lives here.

Contact Stargazing Guy for any copyright-related requests or queries @ stargazer1@stargazingguy.co.uk