Astronaut Mike Massimino Shares Space Journey

In 1969, six-year old Mike Massimino was transfixed by the television coverage of the moon landing. Like a rocket engine at lift off, it ignited his dream of being an astronaut like his hero Neil Armstrong.

Fifty years later, he shared his experience of being a part of NASA and how his education at Columbia University made it happen.

“As a Long Island high school student, I didn’t really think being an astronaut was a possibly and was something I only dreamed about as a little kid,” says Massimino who spoke to Overlake students on Wednesday. “At that point in my life I loved engineering and thought that it was a good path in life. Going to Columbia’s School of Engineering I was on my way with a good education and hopefully a good job.”

Years later as a graduate student at M.I.T. Massimino’s dream was reignited with an invitation to apply to NASA’s Astronaut program. His application was denied. So was his second and third attempt. Just as he was settling into his teaching job at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, he applied for a fourth time., This time he was accepted and in 1996 made it through the demanding two-year training program. Assigned to his first space flight in 2002, he was part of two shuttle missions to service the Hubble telescope. 

An interesting tidbit about the missions is that each astronaut is allowed to bring one personal shirt. “I brought my Columbia University shirt because believe it or not, I thought a lot about this choice. I wanted to pay tribute to the organization that I felt got me to space, and I had a lot of choices. My opportunity to get a college education at Columbia showed me that anything is possible,” explains Massimino. In addition to his spacewalks, Massimino has the privilege of being the first person to tweet in space. He’s also frequently appeared in television documentaries and actually played himself on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

So how did Overlake land a former astronaut to speak to our community?

Massimino is now a professor at Columbia, and he’s joining with the university’s admissions team to visit a select number of schools in our country and share his story. “We’re pretty honored to have been selected by Columbia,” says Kate Asgari who is Overlake’s Director of College Counseling. “While Mike shares the importance of his college education with our students, their admissions representative is here to answer any questions prospective students may have. It’s clever because, by far, it’s been our most popular college admissions visit we’ve had so far.”

Asgari adds that while Columbia may not be right for every student, Mike’s message of having passion and a dream is one we can all embrace. “I’m always encouraging our upper school students to find the school where they’ll fit,” says Asgari. “Students need to realize that it’s not only the college accepting the student, it’s the student realizing that they have the power to say, ‘This is where I belong.’