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Spaceman: The True Story of a Young Boy’s Journey to Becoming an Astronaut
by Mike Massimino (Author)
Booktalk: From the time he was seven-years-old and saw Apollo 11 land on the moon, Mike Massimino dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Long Island is a long way from space. Kids like him, growing up in working-class families, seldom left the neighborhood. But with the encouragement of teachers and mentors, Mike ventured down on a path that took him to Columbia University and to MIT. It wasn’t easy. There were academic setbacks and disappointments aplenty–and NASA turned him down three times. Still, Mike never gave up. He rose to each challenge and forged ahead, inching closer to realizing his boyhood dream. His love of science and space, along with his indomitable spirit and sense of teamwork eventually got him assigned to two missions to fix the Hubble Space Telescope–as a spacewalker.
Snippet: On March 1, 2020, I left Earth for the first ime. I got on board the space shuttle Columbia and blasted 350 miles into orbit. It was a big day, a day I’d been dreaming about since I was seven years old, a day I’d been training for nonstop since NASA had accepted me into the astronaut training program six years earlier. But even with all of that waiting and planning, I still wasn’t ready. Nothing you do on this planet can ever truly prepare you for what it means to leave it.
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