Astronauts Robert D. Cabana and Bryan D. O’Connor, along with former astronauts John E. Blaha and Loren J. Shriver, are being inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame.
They will join Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Jim Lovell, Sally Ride and John Young.
A public ceremony to commemorate the veteran astronauts was held May 3 at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
The 2008 inductees were selected by a committee of former NASA officials and flight controllers, journalists, historians and Hall of Fame astronauts.
With four space shuttle missions to his credit, Cabana was the commander of the first International Space Station assembly mission. Currently, he is the director of Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.
O’Connor was shuttle pilot on mission STS-61B and commander of STS-40, the first shuttle mission dedicated to life science studies. He now serves NASA as chief, safety and mission assurance with responsibility for the safety, reliability, maintainability and quality assurance of all NASA programs.
Over the span of 17 years, Blaha flew on five space shuttle missions and set the American men’s space record for time in space during his four months on orbit. Blaha retired from NASA in 1997 and is active in private industry.
Shriver, a veteran of three shuttle flights, commanded the STS-31 mission to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope and served at Kennedy as the launch and payload processing deputy director from 1997 to 2000.
This is the seventh group of space shuttle astronauts named to the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame and brings the total number of inductees to 70.