Atlantis’ team carries the ball for NASA

By Marcia Dunn

updated 4:10 p.m. ET Nov. 16, 2009

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The first orthopedic surgeon in space is flying aboard the shuttle Atlantis, along with two former college football players, one of them an NFL pick, and the grandson of Amelia Earhart’s personal photographer.

Three of the astronauts are on their first flight into outer space, and three of them have been there before. Two are Marines, two have had Navy experience, two are civilians. And all six of them are men — although a woman, space station astronaut Nicole Stott, will be joining them for the homeward trip.

Here's a brief look at Atlantis' six shuttle astronauts:

Commander Charles Hobaugh could care less what he eats on Thanksgiving as long as he’s in space.

Hobaugh, a colonel in the Marines, is making his third shuttle flight but his first as skipper. He used his commander’s prerogative to skip the irradiated turkey and freeze-dried trimmings that NASA could have tucked away for the crew’s Thanksgiving dinner.

“The season is whatever the season is,” he said. “We’re just always pleased to be in space. I don’t care what they give us. It could be beef brisket. It could be tofu. It doesn’t matter to me. We’re going to enjoy ourselves no matter what we do.”

His was the last voice heard by the Columbia astronauts right before they died in 2003. He was speaking to them from Mission Control as they were returning to Earth; their spaceship shattered minutes before landing.

Hobaugh said he thinks often of that fateful morning and believes he’s smarter now because of it.

Hobaugh, 48, nicknamed Scorch, flew combat during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the early 1990s. He became an astronaut in 1996. He and wife Corinna, a schoolteacher, have four children, ages 16 to 22. He was born in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Pilot Barry “Butch” Wilmore is experiencing space for the first time after nearly a decade of training.

He said he’s always been inquisitive about everything — “and I still am.”

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“My mom said my first word was ’why.’ I think she said that jokingly,” he said. His schoolteacher mother had three science education shows on public television back in the 1970s.

Wilmore, 46, a Navy captain from Mount Juliet, Tenn., completed 21 combat missions during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. NASA chose him as an astronaut in 2000.

He played football for Tennessee Technological University in the 1980s as an outside linebacker and two decades later was inducted into its sports hall of fame. He jokes that crewmate Leland Melvin, a one-time National Football League pick, may be bigger, but “I think I’m a little bit meaner than him.”

He and wife Deanna have two daughters, ages 2 and 5.

Michael Foreman, the lead spacewalker, is considered “the wire tie king.”

His crewmates call him that because of all the wires that need to be fastened to tie down equipment outside the International Space Station. He will perform the first two spacewalks.

“We’re going for that wire tie centurion patch, the guy who installs 100 wire ties on the space station,” he joked.

Foreman, 52, a retired Navy captain from Wadsworth, Ohio, was a naval aviator, test pilot and flight instructor before becoming an astronaut in 1998. He made his first shuttle flight last year and said he was shocked when NASA assigned him to another mission so soon.

He’s wanted to fly in space ever since childhood. It’s risky, he acknowledged, but “worth it because we’re kind of advancing the technology and eventually we’ll move off this planet.”

He and wife Lorrie, who runs her own construction management business in Houston, have two sons in their 20s and a 17-year-old daughter. His daughter-in-law is an engineer at Johnson Space Center.

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