Kimbrough with State Senator Sue Serino and Walkway Over the Hudson Executive Director
Elizabeth Waldstein-Hart
POUGHKEEPSIE – NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough was the star attraction at Friday night’s Walkway Over the Hudson Starwalk. He wowed the crowds as he talked about his experiences in space and answered questions about future NASA missions.
Kimbrough, who lives in Atlanta, is a USMA graduate, who flew a six-month mission aboard the international space station in 2016.
“The real purpose of it is an unbelievable laboratory where we can do world-class science and research,” Kimbrough said. “One of the cool things I got to do was to grow lettuce in space. This has only been done a couple of times before; very, very unique, and I didn’t realize what a morale boost it was going to be to my crew. It was real cool – something growing in the space station and everybody kept wanting to come water it and watch it grow and we got to harvest it and eat it.”
The US is flying exclusively on Russian spacecrafts, but is currently building new vehicles, which will eventually take astronauts to the moon and Mars, Kimbrough said.
