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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5 February 1947 Mary L. Cleave (NASA) US.

6 February 1961 Yuri Onufrienko (RKA) Ukraine.

7 February 1929 Konstantin Feoktistov (RKA) Russia. An early space pioneer. Part of the crew of Voskhod 1, the first space craft to carry three cosmonauts, in October 1964.

7 February 1932 Alfred Worden (NASA) US. Another early space pioneer. One of only 24 people to have flown to the Moon – so far – on Apollo 15 in July/August 1971.

7 February 1963 Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper (NASA) US. One of the new space pioneers. She has flown on two Space Shuttle missions, STS-115 (September 2006) and STS-126 (November 2008), during which she completed five spacewalks totalling 33 hours and 42 minutes.

9 February 1954 Ulrich Walter (DLR) Germany.

9 February 1960 Peggy Whitson (NASA) US. With Daniel Tani (read about him in last week’s post – his birthdate is 1 February 1960), Whitson conducted the 100th spacewalk on the International Space Station 18 December 2007, as part of Expedition 16. This was one of her many achievements and she is still flying into space, most recently serving as commander on the Axiom Mission 2 (Ax-2), the second all-private astronaut mission to the International Space Station in May 2023.

10 February 1968 Garrett Reisman (NASA) US.

11 February 1960 Richard Mastracchio (NASA) US.

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

Also, thanks to www.pillownaut.com for the initial list of birthdays, and the many, many resources on the internet, especially Wikipedia and NASA.      

* = 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