ANNAPOLIS, Maryland, December 14. AMONG the crew of seven astronauts who recently were launched into space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery are a pair of Naval Academy graduates who competed in athletics during their days on The Yard. <\/p>\n
Cmdr. Sunita (Pandya) Williams, Class of 1987, is serving as a flight engineer on the voyage, while Capt. Robert Curbeam Jr., Class of 1984, is one of the crew's mission specialists.<\/p>\n
Williams, who is making her first trip into space, earned four letters in swimming and served as the captain of the team during her senior year. Curbeam, a veteran of two previous voyages aboard the Shuttle, was a two-year member of the Navy junior varsity lacrosse team.<\/p>\n
The shuttle, on mission STS-116, launched from the Kennedy Space Center the night of Dec. 9, rendezvous with the International Space Station two days later and is expected to remain in space until Dec. 21. One of the main goals of the mission is to continue building the ISS, with one part of the building process being the delivery of an $11 million Integrated Truss Segment.<\/p>\n
Curbeam conducted a spacewalk Tuesday to assist in the attachment of the truss, while later in the voyage Curbeam and Williams are expected to make a spacewalk together to work on routing power through the ISS. <\/p>\n
Williams will make her first foray into space an extended one as she will remain aboard the International Space Station for the next six months.<\/p>\n
Over 50 graduates of the Naval Academy have gone on to be selected for NASA's astronaut program, the most out of any school in the country.<\/p>\n
Special thanks to Justin Kischefsky of Navy Media Relations for this report.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ANNAPOLIS, Maryland, December 14. AMONG the crew of seven astronauts who recently were launched into space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery are a pair of Naval Academy graduates who competed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n