NASA / GETTY IMAGES
	Rick Husband sits in the commander’s station as the shuttle Columbia orbits Earth on Jan. 17.

Some astronauts would have shunned the attention, but the 45-year-old former Air Force test pilot relished the chance to represent his hometown and said he hoped some of Amarillo's younger generation would take notice. Married with two children, Husband was making his first landing yesterday as a shuttle commander at the controls of the Columbia.

"It's nice to see the hometown folks get so excited about this and see a lot of attention generated there," Husband said. "From the standpoint of all the kids in school, I think it's good for them to see some coverage and get more involved in the mission."

Husband started becoming involved in missions around the dawn of the Space Age. His interest in becoming an astronaut dates to childhood.

"From the very time I was 4 years old, when the Mercury program first got started, I was in front of the TV for every one of the launches," Husband said. "And for the whole time I was growing up, for as long as I can remember, anytime anyone asked me what I wanted to be it was, 'I want to be an astronaut.' "

Husband graduated from high school in Amarillo and earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Texas Tech University in 1980. He set off in pursuit of his dream, receiving Air Force pilot training at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma.

He soon was flying F-4 fighters and became so good at it that by 1985 he was teaching others to fly them. In December 1987, he was assigned to Edwards Air Force Base in California, where he attended the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School. Afterward, he earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering from nearby California State University, Fresno, in 1990.

Husband applied to NASA to become an astronaut candidate and was accepted in December 1994. After a year of training, he represented the Astronaut Office on several projects, including space-shuttle upgrades and the canceled X-38 program to build a crew-return vehicle for the international space station. On his first trip into space in 1999, he served as the Discovery's co-pilot on the maiden docking mission to the station.

— Michael Cabbage, The Orlando Sentinel