Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [121]
By then, I was already in zero gravity, hurtling through space at 17,500 miles an hour. Gabby’s wedding ring, on a leather string around my neck, was soon floating in front of me. It would float like that, a nice reminder of my marriage, for the entire mission.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
From a Distance
Thirty-two minutes after we were safely in space, traveling at a speed of five miles per second, my crew and I changed the shuttle’s orbit by firing maneuvering engines. We had to get on the right path to meet the International Space Station two days later. Meanwhile, on the ground, Gabby would soon head to the airport for her return to Houston. Two days later, she’d be undergoing surgery to replace the missing piece of her skull. We both had a big week ahead of us.
As I settled in on the shuttle, I received my first e-mail from Gabby since January 8. She had painstakingly typed it out herself, with a nurse at her side. It read: “Hi Mark, Sweetie Pie. Feel fine. Proud. Tulips, thank you. KISSES. GABBY.” I also found a handwritten letter from her packed with my belongings: “Come back soon and don’t forget to bring me a star. Thanks for all you do. Love, Gabby.” I knew Gabby hadn’t come up with that line herself; a nurse had helped her compose the letter. And because Gabby was writing with her left hand, the letter looked like it was penned by a first grader. Still, it reminded me of how hard she was trying to communicate with everyone, and especially with me.
I didn’t have time to dwell on any of this, of course. It was time to get to work.
For astronauts, the first day in space always felt tenuous. We were trying to adjust to weightlessness, and there was a long list of duties to address. Space shuttle missions were incredibly complex and very busy. It was easy to get behind schedule. I got my crew in the habit of saying, “If you’re not early, you’re late.” We tried to stay ahead of the timeline, constantly working to build up some padding in the day’s schedule for when things went wrong.
I admired each member of my crew, a talented group of veteran astronauts, and it meant a lot to me that they were wearing “Gabby” bracelets. The rubberized wristbands, sold to benefit a scholarship fund in memory of Gabe Zimmerman, had come to be called “Peace-Love-Gabby” bracelets. I didn’t need my crew asking all the time about how Gabby was doing. Their wristbands let me know that they, too, had her in their hearts on the mission.
Each crew member had taken his own circuitous route into space and onto STS-134. But for all of us, our yearnings to be astronauts began in childhood.
Mission specialist Greg Chamitoff had been in Florida on a family vacation in July 1969 and actually saw the liftoff of Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11. Then six years old, he announced he wanted to be an astronaut and never wavered, getting a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics. He spent ten years applying for the astronaut program before being accepted. (The title of “mission specialist” is given to astronauts who are not the commander or the pilot. NASA wanted to give them a title, and that’s what they settled on.)
Pilot Greg “Box” Johnson was also inspired to be an astronaut by Apollo 11. As a seven-year-old in 1969, he watched the launch on a black-and-white TV at his grandparents’ home in Michigan. Box became a U.S. Air Force colonel, and like me, served in Desert Storm. He was one of the astronauts on the team that investigated the cause of the Columbia accident in 2003.
Mission specialist Mike Fincke loved watching spacewalking astronauts as a boy. “That’s it!” he’d say. “That’s what I want to do with my life.” On STS-134, Mike would break the record for most time spent in space by an American astronaut—382 days. (A Russian cosmonaut holds the world record at 803 days.)
When lead spacewalker Drew Feustel was young, he assumed that most humans would be astronauts in the future, and he’d be one of them. He thought, mistakenly, that space-faring would be commonplace. He grew up wanting to study rocks, especially moon rocks,