NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has named Waleed Abdalati the agency’s chief scientist, effective Jan. 3. Abdalati will serve as the principal adviser to the NASA administrator on agency science programs, strategic planning and the evaluation of related investments.

Abdalati is currently the director of the Earth Science and Observation Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He also is an associate professor in the university’s geography department. Between 1998 and 2008, Abdalati held various positions at NASA in the areas of scientific research, program management and scientific management. His research has focused on the study of polar ice cover using satellite and airborne instruments. He has led or participated in nine field and airborne campaigns in the Arctic and the Antarctic.

Abdalati will represent all of the scientific endeavors in the agency, ensuring they are aligned with and fulfill the administration’s science objectives. He will advocate for NASA science in the context of those broader government science agendas and work closely with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget.

“We are excited to have Waleed return to the agency during such a critical transition period,” Bolden said. “His experience, wide-range of scientific knowledge and familiarity with NASA will greatly benefit the agency. He will be a true advocate for our many and diverse science research and exploration programs.”

During his first tenure at NASA, Abdalati served as the head of the Cryospheric Sciences Branch at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. He also managed the Cryospheric Sciences Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Abdalati is a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, a joint venture between the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. His research examines how and why the Earth’s ice cover is changing and what those changes mean for life on our planet.

Abdalati received a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Syracuse University in 1986, a Master of Science in aerospace engineering sciences from the University of Colorado in 1991, and a doctorate in 1996 from the Department of Geography at the University of Colorado, where he was one of the first graduates of the university’s Program in Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences.

He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and NASA-related technical reports, with approximately 1,500 citations in the peer-reviewed literature. Abdalati has received numerous awards for his research and service to NASA, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, a NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, and two NASA Group Achievement Awards.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/people/features/abdalati.html

The American Astronomical Society (AAS) is pleased to announce that the first Lancelot M. Berkeley – New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy is being awarded to William J. Borucki and David G. Koch of NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

Borucki and Koch (rhymes with “Bach”) serve as principal investigator and deputy principal investigator, respectively, of the Kepler space mission, which — in the words of the prize committee’s citation — “is discovering new exoplanets while making major advancements in the search for terrestrial planets around other stars.” The two scientists will share $8,000 in prize money and have their expenses covered for travel to the upcoming 217th AAS meeting in Seattle, Washington, where they will jointly present the Lancelot Berkeley Prize Lecture on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011.

This prestigious new AAS prize was established in 2010 by the New York Community Trust, which administers the estate of Lancelot M. Berkeley, a New York lawyer and astronomy enthusiast. The Lancelot Berkeley Prize will be awarded annually for highly meritorious work in advancing the science of astronomy published in a peer-reviewed journal during the previous year. It is given without distinction as to nationality. Nominations were evaluated by a committee of three AAS vice-presidents and the editors in chief of the Astrophysical Journal and Astronomical Journal. The judges reported a “unanimous, wholehearted recommendation” that the 2011 Lancelot Berkeley Prize be awarded to Borucki and Koch “for the discovery of new worlds and for taking a major step in determining the extent of life in our galaxy.”

Borucki earned a master’s degree in physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1962 and has been employed at NASA Ames ever since. He first worked on development of the heat shield for the Apollo command module. After the moon landings, he investigated lightning in planetary atmospheres and studied the effects of nitric oxides and chlorofluoromethanes on Earth’s ozone layer. Eventually his interest turned to planets beyond our solar system, a field that has grown enormously since the first such objects were discovered around normal stars in 1995.

Koch earned his B.S. at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his M.S. and Ph.D. at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He has worked on scientific space instrumentation since the Apollo program and has participated in balloon-borne, airborne, and orbital science missions covering the spectrum from submillimeter and infrared radiation to X-rays and gamma rays. After Cornell he went to American Science and Engineering and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then to NASA/Ames in 1988.

In 1992 the two scientists began collaborating on what eventually became known as Kepler. The 0.95-meter-aperture (38-inch) space telescope was launched into Earth orbit on March 6, 2009, almost exactly 400 years after its namesake, German astronomer-mathematician Johannes Kepler, published the first two of his three laws of planetary motion in Astronomia Nova (“The New Astronomy”). Kepler is staring at more than 100,000 stars in the constellations Cygnus, the Swan, and Lyra, the Lyre, watching for tiny dips in brightness — telltale signs of planets transiting (crossing in front of) their faces. The “holy grail” of the 3.5-year (or longer) mission is to find Earth-like planets circling within the habitable zones around Sun-like stars.

The Kepler science team now includes dozens of scientists from research institutions all across the United States and in Canada and Europe. Borucki, Koch, and their colleagues announced their first Neptune- and Jupiter-mass exoplanet discoveries at the 215th AAS meeting in Washington, DC, last January, and in a paper published in the journal Science that same month. The entire April 20, 2010, issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters was devoted to Kepler results; six months later, Koch’s paper in that issue was named by Thomson-Reuters ScienceWatch as the most cited space-science paper of the preceding 2 years as well as the most cited in all categories of emerging research fronts. More publications and discoveries have followed, including new insights into the behavior of some of the target stars, and astronomers are eagerly looking forward to the Seattle AAS meeting, where numerous Kepler presentations are scheduled.

AAS president Debra M. Elmegreen of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, informed Borucki and Koch of their selection as winners of the 2011 Lancelot Berkeley Prize. Borucki recalls, “When I got the call from Debra I felt a burst of joy and happiness that Dave and I were being recognized for developing the Kepler mission.” He adds, “It’s been a privilege to lead the team to determine the frequency of Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of other stars. The Kepler mission is a critical step in mankind’s exploration of the Milky Way.”

“It is a great honor to receive an award from the AAS,” says Koch. “It has been 18 years since we started down the road to an operating Kepler mission, with all the hundreds of dedicated scientists, engineers, programmers, and managers, and it has been a fantastic journey. Finding habitable planets will surely serve as an inspiration for future generations to continue to explore the cosmos.”

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Four current NASA leaders and one retiree were recognized for their work by Women in Aerospace at the organization’s annual awards ceremony and banquet on Tuesday, Oct. 26. The event celebrates women’s professional excellence in aerospace and honors those who have made outstanding contributions to the aerospace community.

NASA leaders who were honored at the 2010 awards are: Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, Director of NASA’s Langley Research Center Lesa Roe, Program Planning Specialist Beth Beck, Aerospace Engineer Jill Lynette Hanna Prince and Nancy Grace Roman, who retired from NASA in 1979 as chief astronomer.

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden presented Women in Aerospace’s Outstanding Member Award to Garver, noting her ongoing leadership and participation in the organization and her passion and dedication to opening the high frontier of space to the everyday person.

Bolden said, “On behalf of NASA, I want to recognize all of our honorees for the breadth of their accomplishment and the passion they bring to the agency. Their achievements are truly enlarging our field and amazing the world.”

Prince, an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., received the Achievement Award for her work in the development of autonomous aerobraking, used on missions such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and her contributions to planetary mission atmospheric flight.

Recognized for her dedication and innovative contributions to building public awareness for aerospace, Beck received the Aerospace Awareness Award. She is a program planning specialist in the Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Roe was a co-recipient of the Leadership Award for her dedication to inspiring current and future generations of women and her work to deliver innovative solutions to meet the nation’s aerospace and atmospheric science challenges. The co-recipient of the Leadership Award was Mina V. Samii, vice president of Computer Sciences Corporation in Lanham, Md.

A highlight of the evening was when NASA’s Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, presented Women in Aerospace’s Lifetime Achievement Award to Nancy Grace Roman, who was NASA’s chief astronomer before her retirement. Weiler reviewed Roman’s esteemed career at NASA and her trailblazing role in astronomy and government leadership, noting that her efforts were instrumental in making the Hubble Space Telescope a reality.

In addition to the NASA recipients, Alison Flatau, associate dean and professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, received the Aerospace Educator Award, and Donna K. Collins, director, Program Management, at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company in Ft. Worth, Texas, received the International Achievement Award.

The evening also included the awarding of the first WIA scholarship, funded by the WIA Foundation, and given to women pursuing undergraduate technical degrees to encourage them to enter careers in the aerospace field. Whitney Lohmeyer, a senior at North Carolina State University, was the recipient.

Women in Aerospace is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and NASA leaders have been involved with the organization throughout its history. The organization has previously recognized NASA leaders for their contributions. Lynn Cline, deputy associate administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, received the Outstanding Member Award in 2009.

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NASA has awarded grants to nine academic institutions and their partners that serve large numbers of minority and underrepresented students to strengthen offerings in science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM. The grants total approximately $1.15 million through the agency’s Curriculum Improvement Partnership Award for the Integration of Research (CIPAIR) project.

Seven institutions and their partners will receive one-year funding ranging from approximately $145,000 to $150,000 per year for up to three years, based on performance and availability of funds. Two organizations will receive planning grants. The grants must be used to increase the quantity and quality of STEM curricula. The institutions and partners selected are:

- Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, and Southeastern Community College in Whiteville, N.C. (Planning Grant)
- LaGuardia Community College in Long Island, N.Y., and Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Planning Grant)
- Atlanta Metropolitan College
- New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Hostos Community College in the Bronx, N.Y.
- San Mateo/Canada Community College in San Francisco and San Francisco State University
- Santa Monica Community College in California and the University of California, Los Angeles
- Spelman College in Atlanta and Gadsen Community College in Gadsen, Ala.
- United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, N.D.
- Virginia State University in Petersburg, Va., and Louisburg Community College in Louisburg, N.C.

Selections were based on proposal reviews by scientists and educators from private industry, academia, the National Science Foundation and NASA. The formal award, financial arrangements and grant administration will be made through the NASA Shared Services Center. CIPAIR is managed for NASA by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

These awards provide funding that continues NASA’s commitment to achieving a broad-based, competitive aerospace research and technology development capability among the nation’s minority serving institutions. NASA continues to invest in projects that will build, sustain and provide a skilled, knowledgeable and diverse workforce to meet the emerging needs of the agency and the nation.

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It is with great sadness that I announce the passing of Clarence A. “Sy” Syvertson, a former Director of the NASA Ames Research Center from 1977 to 1984. He died the evening of Sept. 13, 2010 at the age of 84.

Sy was an exemplary scientist and a dynamic and innovative leader who began his career at Ames in 1948 and matched his theoretical insights on hypersonic airflows with brilliant experimental work. He led the 3.5-foot hypersonic wind tunnel branch and developed advanced vehicles like the XB-70 Valkyrie and the M2 lifting bodies. His fundamental work on reentry vehicles contributed to the design of the space shuttle. He served as Director of Astronautics and during the tenure of former Ames Center Director Hans Mark from 1969 to 1977 as Center Deputy Director.

Under his leadership, NASA Ames continued to blossom as a world-class research organization. Ames people did groundbreaking research on vertical-lift aircraft, built the world’s largest wind tunnel, flew the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, consolidated its collaboration with NASA Dryden, and prepared the Galileo Probe for its journey to Jupiter. He was elected to the NASA Ames Hall of Fame, was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the AIAA, and won many awards for his service to NASA and to space exploration. Most recently, Sy visited Ames for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Historic Aerospace Site dedication held on August 25, 2009.

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On Aug. 5, the San José copper and gold mine near the northern town of Copiapó, Chile, collapsed, trapping 33 miners about a half mile underground. The Chilean government spoke with the United States Department of State to request NASA’s technical advice related to the agency’s life sciences research activities.

On Aug. 31, a NASA team of experts arrived in Santiago as part of NASA’s commitment to provide U.S. assistance. NASA’s assistance is only a small contribution to the Chilean government’s overall rescue effort. On Sept. 1, the team began three days’ worth of meetings in Copiapó.

The NASA team includes two medical doctors, a psychologist and an engineer. Dr. Michael Duncan, deputy chief medical officer in NASA’s Space Life Sciences Directorate at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, is leading the team. The other team members are physician J.D. Polk, psychologist Al Holland and engineer Clint Cragg.

NASA’s long experience in training and planning for emergencies in human spaceflight and its protection of humans in the hostile environment of space may have some direct benefits that can be useful to the rescue. Environments may very well be different, but human response both in physiology and behavioral responses to emergencies is quite similar. Some of the results acquired through NASA’s research may be applicable to the trapped miners.

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NASA and the City of Houston have a long — nearly 50-year — history together.

In 1961, the Johnson Space Center was established, originally as the Manned Space Center, in Houston. The people of the Houston area welcomed personnel with open arms. The city was ecstatic. Space fever promptly swept the town. The baseball team was named the Astros, and the basketball team was called the Rockets.

From the early Gemini, Apollo and Skylab projects to today’s space shuttle, International Space Station and exploration endeavors, the center continues to lead NASA’s efforts in human space exploration. And the enthusiasm throughout the Houston community continues.

This year, Houston’s Mayor Annise Parker recommended that the NASA workforce receive the city’s annual Spirit of Houston Award for the iconic contributions the people have made throughout the agency’s history. The award was established in 2004 to honor Houstonians who motivated their fellow citizens with their everyday acts of leadership.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden accepted the award at Houston’s 174th Birthday Celebration August 26, 2010. Employees from Johnson, including Center Director Michael Coats, also attended the event.

“It is an honor to accept the 2010 Spirit of Houston Award on behalf of all of the men and women of NASA,” Bolden said. “Every one of us is absolutely committed to a vibrant future for exploration and improving life on Earth.”

The theme for this year’s birthday event was “Houston, We Have the Moon and the Stars!” Former astronaut Bernard A. Harris Jr. was inducted into the 2010 Houston Hall of Fame at the event.

For more than 50 years, NASA and its workforce have powered Houston and the nation into the 21st century through accomplishments that are enduring milestones of human achievement. Among those accomplishments are technological innovations and scientific discoveries that have improved lives on Earth.

“The men and women who work on these programs are dedicated professionals with a true spirit of exploration,” said Coats. “It is for them and because of them that the Spirit of Houston is alive and well. We thank you again for this great honor.”

Earlier that day, Parker proclaimed Aug. 26, 2010, as “The NASA Family Spirit of Houston Day.” The proclamation stated the “dedicated workforce reaches beyond the boundaries of the Johnson Space Center campus and makes Houston a better community at large.”

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A group of astronomers from NASA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and other organizations are flying to the other side of the world for a front row seat and a rare opportunity to study a spacecraft’s targeted fiery descent through Earth’s atmosphere.

A Douglas DC-8 airborne laboratory departed yesterday evening from NASA’s Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility at Palmdale, Calif., carrying nearly 30 scientists and their instruments to Melbourne, Australia to make final preparations for the highly-anticipated return of JAXA’s Hayabusa spacecraft. This luminous re-entry will mark the end of the spacecraft’s seven-year journey to bring a sample of asteroid Itokawa back to Earth. Hayabusa is expected to fall to Earth over a vast, unpopulated area of Australia at about midnight local time (7 a.m. PDT) on Sunday, June 13, 2010.

Earlier this week, JAXA announced it successfully completed the guidance of the Hayabusa spacecraft, so that will land in the Woomera Prohibited Area in Australia.

“Hayabusa is hurtling toward Earth at an immense speed, comparable to that of an asteroid impact,” said Peter Jenniskens, the observation campaign’s principal investigator and a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., and the SETI Institute, Mountain View, Calif. “The capsule that protects the asteroid sample will be only 6,500 feet ahead of the rest of the spacecraft, which will break into numerous pieces, essentially making it a man-made meteor.”

Jenniskens and the team of astronomers onboard the DC-8 will have their instruments secured near the plane’s specialized windows. This, paired with their altitude of 39,000 feet far above light pollution and clouds, will enable the scientists to study what happens when the spacecraft and sample return capsule heat up high in the atmosphere. When Hayabusa reaches an altitude of 190,000 feet, its heat shield will experience temperatures of more than 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, while the gas surrounding the capsule will reach 13,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or hotter than the surface of the sun.

The team’s primary goal during the airborne mission is to study the Hayabusa capsule’s re-entry to gain technological insight into the heat shield that designers and engineers can use while developing future exploration vehicles. Because of Hayabusa’s unique heat shield material, shape and the tremendous interplanetary re-entry speed of 7.58 miles per second, scientists expect its descent will provide new, valuable information about heat shields for computer models of re-entry conditions. JAXA’s Hayabusa is expected to be the second fastest man-made object to return to Earth; NASA’s Stardust sample return capsule set the record re-entry speed of 7.95 miles per second in January 2006.

“The return of Hayabusa provides NASA and JAXA with a rare opportunity to monitor the performance of an atmospheric entry vehicle at speeds much higher than that of the space shuttle returning from low-Earth orbit,” said Jay Grinstead, the observation campaign project manager and a research scientist at NASA Ames. “The spectrum of the light emitted by the gas and surface at these extreme temperatures tells us about the physics and chemistry of atmospheric entry. Our vantage point onboard the DC-8 and the variety of instruments enable us to track the evolution of the spectrum and compare it to simulations used for design and analysis of entry systems.”

The airborne observation team also will provide JAXA with data and images obtained during the flight to correlate with JAXA’s ground optical and radio observations and assist in locating the capsule on Earth. Since the breakup of the main spacecraft will be visible as well, scientists will use images of the debris to validate computer models astronomers use to predict how an object will fragment and disperse as it enters Earth’s atmosphere at these high speeds.

NASA astronomers made similar airborne studies from NASA’s DC-8 flying observatory for the September 2008 re-entry of the European Space Agency’s Automated Transfer Vehicle “Jules Verne,” as well as the Stardust sample return re-entry airborne campaigns. During those missions, NASA scientists studied the light emitted by the descending spacecraft, to better understand the mechanisms of atmospheric entry heats of natural and man-made objects.

The Hayabusa airborne observation campaign is supported by the In-Space Propulsion Technology Project in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, Washington.

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NASA hosted a special guest last month, and you just may have seen him on television last night talking about it!

The name “Bashir Salahuddin” may not ring any bells with you (nope, it’s not the doctor from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”), but fans of “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” will recognize him as “Milky J,” whose “Hubble Gotchu!” sketches have showcased the famous telescope’s magnificent images.

After the videos aired Lynn Chandler gave the Jimmy Fallon crew a call. Lynn works at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., as the public affairs officer for the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s successor to the Hubble.

When the full-size Webb model traveled to New York at the beginning of June, she suggested Bashir meet up there with NASA’s first civil servant Nobel Prize laureate Dr. John Mather to discuss Hubble and Webb, of which Dr. Mather is the senior project scientist. The visit there went so well that Bashir (as Milky J) decided to take a trip to Goddard to film another segment.

Let it not be said that NASA folks lack a sense of humor! Milky J’s Hubble fanaticism may be mostly just for laughs, but Bashir, who also writes for “Late Night,” has a genuine interest in space science. “Hubble Gotchu!” carries that science to new audiences, which is one reason why we loved helping put this video together.

And putting it together took a mountain of effort, both from the Goddard family and from the “Late Night” team. On our end, weeks of preparations and permissions went into making sure Bashir could film in all the “cool” spots. (Lynn and Mike McClare, Goddard’s Hubble and Webb video producer extraordinaire, deserve some serious high-fives for getting that all taken care of.)

Some of the “Late Night” crew, headed by director Michael Blieden, took the train down from New York on July 21 to scope Goddard for places to shoot. Andy Freeberg, a Goddard producer who helped guide the team, said they were just blown away by all the stuff going on here.

The morning of the 22nd came, and the rest of the crew arrived for a full day of shooting. The schedule was jam-packed, moving from the testing chambers to the NASA Communications center (Nascom), to the clean room, to the Goddard TV studio. Goddard never seems quite as big as it does when you’re lugging video equipment on a hot day!

The Jimmy Fallon crew was a pleasure to work with. Despite the fast-paced schedule Bashir, Michael and the rest of the team took the time to chat with the Goddard spectators who stopped by to see what was going on. Bashir is soft-spoken in comparison to his Milky J alter ego, and a true professional; he had all his dialogue memorized ahead of time.

Filming became a special treat for a school tour group that happened to meander by as the team shot in Nascom. They likely thought it strange that a telescope operator could be such a messy eater. Optical Physicist and “rib-eater” Brent Bos deserves special praise for that performance. He had just completed media training the day before — and slathering on barbecue sauce before the big interview was definitely not one of the topics covered! Brent managed to keep the sauce confined to his face and fingers through multiple takes, a miraculous feat, as any rib fan knows. (The ribs appeared courtesy of Lynn Chandler’s kitchen.)

As Milky J would put it, “Whatever celestial images you need, Hubble gotchu!” When it comes to Hubble and James Webb, NASA gotchu, too.

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If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the voices of yesterday’s space travelers echoing across time as they mingle with the sound of the surf breaking on this secluded beach at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This salty air has been filled with the laughter, whispers, and even tears of the men and women who’ve passed through this shore’s humble beach cottage before soaring off the planet into the vastness of space.

“This is sacred sand out here, it really is,” says Mike Mullane, three-time shuttle astronaut. “It’s where people have made those final goodbyes, and some were final. There’s no spouse, no astronaut walks that sand that doesn’t know, that there is a possibility that this is forever. ”

“As a spouse, you know you’re coming out here to say goodbye, and you don’t know if it’s the last time,” echoes Mullane’s wife, Donna.

The cottage always has been simply “the beach house” to generations of astronauts and their families. For years it’s been their quiet, unassuming preflight retreat where they have reflected as they stood on the threshold of their dream: space travel.

“Before the first mission, to sit out here and look at the sky and say, ‘I’m next! I’m next! It’s going to happen! I’m going to go into space!’ That would just overwhelm me,” says Mullane.

The cozy house sits perched above the dunes at the edge of a pristine beach that stretches undisturbed as far as the eye can see. Its nearest neighbors are launch complexes.

“What history of these people who have walked through this beach house, who have walked on that beach out there in the shadows of the rockets they were launching on tomorrow. What incredible history,” reflects Mullane. “And to be part of it, I felt totally overwhelmed by that reality. That I was now part of it . . . that I was walking the beach in the shadow of the rocket that I was going to be riding.”

“It’s a thing for people to understand. At the same time you are boundlessly joyful, you’re also fearful,” he explains. “That’s hard to get your mind around that. But it is. That’s the reality of an astronaut’s life, and a spouse’s life, in those final days and hours before a mission. Fear and joy overwhelming you.” Adds Donna, “And it’s exhausting!”

The expanses of sea and sky make it a fitting place for astronauts and their loved ones to spend their last preflight visit.

“The beach house is a great place to come to get away from all the distractions of the mission. Come out here, be with your family, kind of relax… in an environment that’s just as non-stressful as possible.”

But the effect of even the best setting has its limitations. Saying goodbye before a space flight “never got easier, and it never will,” Mullane says. “If I flew a hundred times, it would never be easy.”

“It was quite emotional when everybody leaves,” remembers Donna. “You’re by yourself and you see each of the couples of the crew going off in different directions, knowing that it’s a private moment and they are dealing with their own anxiety in their way.”

And while it was his dream to fly in space, Mullane credits much of his success in achieving that dream to the support of his wife. Their long-distance courtship flourished during his West Point career. After getting engaged by mail, they married a week after his graduation in 1967.

“There’s no question that this woman had a significant role in making my dream come true,” he says of his wife of 43 years. ” I really attribute a lot to her being by my side. And she paid for it. It’s tough on spouses to be part of living a dream. It may not be their dream . . . it probably isn’t their dream. They couldn’t have ever foreseen that standing at the altar. And they pay for it along the way with a lot of stress.”

Much of that stress culminates in the final days before launch. That’s why the beach house holds significance that far outweighs its physical presence.

Structurally, the two-story, wood-frame and concrete block house never really outgrew its humble, early 1960s beginnings as part of the oceanfront Neptune Beach subdivision. The development and its land were bought in 1963 (for the grand sum of $31,500) to accommodate the expansion of what would become NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The cottage was somehow spared the fate of the nearby residences and a store and gas station.

“I don’t know who the far-thinking person was that preserved this house from destruction — there were other houses here when this was private property — but thank you. I’m sure they could not have imagined how this would be part of manned space flight history,” says Mullane, as Donna adds, “It’s so important, this place. I mean it really, really is.”

In earlier days, the astronauts could actually stay overnight, and it was dubbed the Astronaut Training and Rehabilitation Building. But it has long since lost its function as a residence with subsequent renovations. The quarters now resemble living rooms and a conference area, which are used for meetings when no astronauts are in town preparing for a mission. Few mementos remain from the early space pioneers who passed through its doors, but even after several renovations the small structure retains the same low-key profile.

In those days long gone by, the house also served as the setting where visiting dignitaries were treated to some “old Florida” cuisine consisting of grilled feral hogs (caught and cooked by the local trapper), swamp cabbage and alligator tails.

But its significant contribution, not only to the shuttle program astronauts, but to the whole history of the U.S. human spaceflight program, comes from giving the space travelers their prelaunch time alone with their families.

“I think it’s important for people to understand is that it’s a dangerous business. You know there is a possibility that something bad can happen and you can die,” says Mullane. “And the spouses know that, and so that makes it a very stressful, stressful moment for everybody, knowing that these goodbyes could be forever, as they were for Challenger and for Columbia.”

And now, just as in years past, the little house by the sea stands ready to welcome the final shuttle crews and their families. Then, once again, the traditional preflight barbecues will give way to quiet walks on the beach, as they add the final shuttle-era chapters to this little-known corner of space history.

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