Thaindian News

HOUSTON, TEXAS (BNO NEWS) — NASA announced on Thursday that for the first time, a Houston, Texas native will be taking off for spaceflight next Tuesday.

Shannon Walker was born, raised and educated from first grade through her doctorate in Space City. So even though every NASA astronaut has called Houston home at one time or another, only Walker can really say she is from Houston.

Walker is scheduled to lift off in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft Tuesday t 4:35 p.m. CDT on her first spaceflight, which will be a long-duration mission to the International Space Station. She will serve as a flight engineer and conduct research onboard the station during Expedition 24 and Expedition 25.

Launch will be from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan with Army Col. Doug Wheelock and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin. The trio will join Expedition 24 in progress, with station commander Alexander Skvortsov and flight engineers Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Mikhail Kornienko, who have been onboard the orbiting lab since April. Walker is scheduled to return to Earth with her Soyuz crewmates in late November.

Walker was born in Houston, attended Parker Elementary School, Johnston Middle School and graduated from Westbury Senior High School. She received a bachelor’s in physics as well as a master’s and doctorate in space physics from Rice University. She was selected by NASA to become an astronaut in 2004 following more than a decade of work in the local space industry.