NASA TV Airing U.S. Astronaut Hall Of Fame Induction On June 5

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA Television will provide live coverage of the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame 2010 induction ceremony on Saturday, June 5, at 2:30 p.m. EDT. The ceremony will take place at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.

Joining the hall of fame this year are former astronauts Guy Bluford Jr., the first African- American to fly in space; Ken Bowersox, pilot of the first maintenance mission to restore NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope; Frank Culbertson Jr., commander of the first space shuttle night landing at Kennedy; and Kathy Thornton, a mission specialist during the first three-person spacewalk flight.

Jon Cryer, Emmy Award winning comedian in the TV series “Two and a Half Men,” is hosting the event. NASA Administrator and former astronaut Charles Bolden will introduce one of the inductees.

Reporters interested in covering the event should contact Andrea Farmer at 321-449-4318 or Jillian McRae at 321-449-4273. For more information about the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, visit: http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com

For biographies of Bluford, Bowersox, Culbertson and Thornton, visit: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/astrobio_former.html

For NASA TV downlink information, schedules and links to streaming video, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv