HPHS Alum to Enter Astronaut Hall of Fame

Highland Park High School graduate John Grunsfeld will be one of four astronauts to be inducted into the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame in May.

Grunsfeld, a NASA astronaut since 1992 who has logged more than 58 days in space, will be honored at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex May 30 along with Steven Lindsey, Kent Rominger and M. Rhea Seddon.

Grunsfeld grew up in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood before his family moved to Highland Park, where he graduated high school in 1976.

From the Kennedy Space Center:

On his last three missions, Grunsfeld worked to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. As a mission specialist on STS-103 in December 1999, he performed two of the three EVAs required to restore the Hubble to working order after the failure of its gyroscopes. As payload commander of STS-109 Columbia in March 2002,Grunsfeld was responsible for the five EVAs over five consecutive days required to upgrade Hubble’s systems. He performed three of these spacewalks, installing a new solar array, power control unit and other equipment. STS-125 Atlantis in May 2009 was the fifth and final Hubble servicing mission. Grunsfeld served as the lead once again for the five EVAs required to perform repairs and to install crucial new equipment. He performed three of the five spacewalks.

Grunsfeld retired from NASA in December 2009 to become the Deputy Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute and a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University. He rejoined NASA in 2012 and is currently the agency Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“The biggest honor is to be an astronaut,” Grunsfeld told the Chicago Tribune. “It’s such a tremendous privilege to be able to represent humankind in our quest to explore space.”