As an engineer, fighter pilot, inventor, telecommunications executive, and astronaut, Terry Hart has a lifetime of remarkable stories. He planned to share some of those experiences back in May as commencement speaker for Lehigh's Class of 2020. But like so many things, graduation was disrupted by the pandemic.
We wanted to learn more about the path that Hart took after his own graduation from Lehigh, a path that eventually landed him in NASA's Astronaut Group 8. In part one of our two-part interview, Hart takes us from the moment his mother first noticed his aptitude for engineering (to the detriment of some of her appliances), to the “nailbiting” experience he had working as a CAPCOM (capsule communicator) for NASA.
Our next episode of Rossin Connection will feature part two of our interview, in which Hart describes his time in space and the maneuver that made history (and nearly didn’t happen), how he turned down another trip into orbit, and why he calls being asked to deliver the commencement address, the honor of his life.