Health

Massachusetts astronaut keeping close eye on SpaceX launch

BOSTON — A Massachusetts-born NASA astronaut will be keeping a close eye on the Kennedy Space Center as SpaceX attempts to liftoff.

His friend is one of SpaceX’s two crew members. The two flew into space aboard Endeavour in 2008.

Dr. Rick Linnehan has been where few have ever gone.

To space.

His last trip there was in 2008 aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. One of his fellow NASA astronauts will be launching into space on SpaceX.

Linnehan went on four shuttle missions, including three trips on the shuttle Columbia.

“For the first two minutes or so you’re pulling around 3g’s through your chest. So the big joke was you get to meet the 600-pound gorilla because it feels like a 600-pound gorilla sitting on your chest,” Linnehan said.

Dr. Linnehan was born in Lowell and graduated from the University of New Hampshire. He spent 59 days in space and set a then NASA record with more than 42 hours in spacewalks.

“I remember looking out the window and seeing Haiti and Cuba and passing Key West. You could see the whole Earth roll and these little bumps come up and they’d turn into these land masses and there was Cuba and the Caribbean and you just kept going and you go, man, this thing really is a ball because you can watch it rotate,” he said.

The United States hasn’t launched its own astronauts into space since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011.

If all goes well this weekend, SpaceX will mark the first time a private company sends humans to space. The two astronauts will link up with the International Space Station, which Dr. Linnehan helped construct in the 1990s.

“I was on the 25th shuttle flight up there, the assembly flight. I did 3 spacewalks on STS 123 and we brought the first element of the first Japanese module up,” Linnehan said.

Dr. Linnehan is a veterinarian and was the first vet to ever fly in space.

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