On a recent Friday, astronaut Rex Walheim visited Chabot as part of the weeklong Destination Station "Sharing the Wonders of Your International Space Station."
Walheim, 48, grew up in the community and a is veteran of three missions to space.
But before he was rocketing into space, he studied locally, graduating in 1980 from San Carlos High School. He then who went on to receive a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering in 1984 from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master of science degree in industrial engineering five years later from the University of Houston.
He was selected to join NASA in 1996, and help develop items for the International Space Station before flying aboard Atlantis. While he may be miles above Earth on his missions, he still thinks about home.
In an interview with NASA prior to his third launch, he talked about looking for his hometown from space on his first mission and locating it by finding Highway 280 and the airport.
“It was just a fantastic thing to be able to see your hometown from space, to think, when I was a little kid I used to look up and watch the airplanes fly over in my backyard and here I was flying over at Mach 25 and looking down at my hometown,” he said in the interview.
Here are some photos from the Chabot Space and Science Center Facebook page!
Let us know what you think of the photos in the comments!
