LONDON: An astronaut with local roots will return to the International Space Station next year, NASA announced this week.
Shane Kimbrough grew up visiting Mims, where his grandparents lived and his mother grew up.
“Anything that launched, my grandfather would be dragging me out to see it, and that’s kind of where my whole interest sparked,” Kimbrough, now 47, told FLORIDA TODAY in 2008 before his first and only spaceflight to date aboard shuttle Endeavour.
A U.S. Army colonel and aviator who served in Operation Desert Storm, Kimbrough said his grandfather Lyle Duff, who died in 2003, owned fruit packing and real estate businesses and taught Sunday school at Mims United Methodist Church. Kimbrough’s mother, DeAnn Johnson of Fernandina Beach, graduated from Titusville High in 1962.
Kimbrough spent most of the his first-grade school year at Oak Park Elementary in Titusville. With a dad in the Army, the family moved frequently before settling in Atlanta.
When time permits during trips to Kennedy Space Center, Kimbrough said he would stop for a meal at one of his grandfather’s favorite restaurants, Dixie Crossroads in Titusville.
His 16-day shuttle mission outfitted the International Space Station with new sleeping quarters, a kitchen and a weight-lifting machine, among other equipment. Kimbrough performed maintenance during two spacewalks, including lubricating a massive joint that rotates power-generating solar array wings.
Now the father of three is preparing to live on the orbiting research complex for six months, a period during which he will become commander of the six-person crew.
Kimbrough is expected to launch with two cosmonauts aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in September 2016, and return to Earth the following March.
NASA also announced that Kate Rubins and Peggy Whitson will serve on station crews. Rubins is a first-time flier selected as an astronaut in 2009, while Whitson is a veteran of two prior expeditions and was the first woman to command the ISS.
