Astronaut returns “home”
PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. – The space shuttle cargo manifest for a recent mission to the International Space Station consisted of thousands of pounds of equipment and one cloth patch.
Lt. Col. Rex Walheim, National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronaut, carried an Air Force Space Command Directorate of Plans and Programs patch into space on board the Atlantis STS-110 space mission April 8-19. He returned that patch to XP Dec. 16.
Walheim, who worked as the command manager for the PAVE PAWS upgrade program at the command headquarters in 1989, said that when you get assigned to a NASA flight they let you take things up with you. He decided to call his old office to ask if they wanted to send something up.
“It’s nice to take things that mean something to you. I grew up in Space Command and I wanted to thank the XP community for all they did for me. It’s where I got my start in space,” Walheim said.
“He contacted us so we sent the patch through the NASA resident office to be added to the cargo manifest. It’s really a neat thing to have one of your own up there. Not a lot of folks get the chance to do this and it’s nice to see one of us make it to space,” said Maj. Jeffrey Cox, executive officer for the NASA resident office.
The road to space travel was difficult for Walheim. After getting his commission through the University of California, Berkeley, Walheim learned that his dream of being a pilot wouldn’t come true after a heart murmur was diagnosed during a flight physical.
He looked to space command and soon found himself stationed at Cavalier Air Station, N.D., as a missile warning crew commander, followed by his XP stint.
While at AFSPC Headquarters, Walheim learned that his heart murmur was no longer evident and his dream of flying finally came true when he moved to Edwards AFB, Calif., to be a test pilot.
“I was doing something I loved and when you do something you love, you excel at it,” he said.
After moving to Edwards, Walheim was accepted to the NASA astronaut program and relocated to Houston to complete basic astronaut training in 1996. In 2002, Walheim was called for the shuttle mission.
The goal of the April 9 mission was to deliver the first segment of the International Space Station’s external truss. The bridge-like apparatus provides a track that allows the Mobile Transporter to move up and down a rail section for easier maintenance. This section of framework will eventually hold systems needed to provide power and cooling for future research laboratories.
The framed patch will sit in an honored spot near XP.
“I had a great experience here. The people were the greatest and they took good care of me. They definitely helped cultivate my flying dream,” said Walheim.
