Out of this World Meeting
It’s not very often you get the opportunity to meet someone who has been in space, let alone someone who has actually only just got back but Andrew Weston, the Gosport manager got to meet NASA Astronaut Steve Bowen. Steve was one of the mission specialists on STS-132, the most recent Space Shuttle mission, which docked with the International Space Station on 16 May 2010. It was launched from the Kennedy Space Center on 14 May 2010.
The primary payload was the Russian Rassvet Mini-Research Module along with an Integrated Cargo Carrier-Vertical Light Deployable (ICC-VLD). Space Shuttle Atlantis landed at the Kennedy Space Center on 26 May 2010, for what is likely the final time, thereby completing its mission and its service life. “Meeting Steve was great, we realised that we actually had a lot in common, our taste in music, both of us are big Wallace & Gromit fans as his wake up call music on the shuttle was the theme tune from the movies!” “We are also both ex Navy and born a few weeks apart but he has logged a total of 27 days, 14 hours, 57 minutes and 39 seconds in space, including 34 hours and 30 minutes of EVA in 5 space walks, I can’t really compete with that!”