IN EARTH ORBIT - Mission Specialist Rick Mastracchio was born in Waterbury and attended public schools there before he earned a degree in electrical engineering/computer science from UConn. But now he's taking up residence in space as part of Shuttle Mission STS-131, his third trip into space and reportedly has 588 hours in space.
In an interview Mastracchio, who before the current mission had logged 588 hours in space, said he hadn't realized "it was even possible or how you became an astronaut as a kid or when I was in high school or even in college. The first sign that I saw that it was even possible to become an astronaut was when I saw an advertisement in a magazine and I thought it would be exciting to see what an astronaut application looked like, so I sent away for an astronaut application." Mastracchio was hired by NASA in 1990 as an engineer and worked on the development of space shuttle flight software requirements and the development of ascent and abort crew procedures for the Astronaut Office.
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