Retired astronaut visits Summer Moon Festival

WAPAKONETA — Carl Walz knew he wanted to be an astronaut ever since he witnessed the Apollo 11 lunar landing in 1969.

“I remember seeing John Glenn’s flight, watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface and thinking, ‘Boy, I’d sure like to do that,” Walz said.

With that goal in mind, Walz studied physics at Kent State and John Carroll University. He joined the U.S. Air Force, where he analyzed radioactive samples and worked as a flight test engineer, a common path to NASA for astronauts at the time.

Walz applied four times before NASA accepted the Cleveland native into its 13th astronaut cohort in January 1990. So began an 18-year career with NASA, during which Walz spent 231 days in space.

He likens living aboard the International Space Station for six months to “floating around like Peter Pan.”

“It’s just like you’re living in this house in space,” said Walz, who visited Wapakoneta Saturday for the Summer Moon Festival. Saturday marked the 55-year anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 lunar landing on July 20, 1969.

Walz’s first trip to outer space came in September 1993 when he was selected to join the Discovery crew, which deployed to the U.S. Advanced Communications Technology Satellite and Shuttle Pallet Satellite for 10 days.

He returned to space three more times, culminating in his six-month trip aboard the International Space Station with the Expedition 4 crew, which conducted flight tests, robotic control tasks and other experiments.

Spending so much time in space wasn’t lonely, Walz said, because there was always so much to do, especially on the shorter missions — and the view was always fantastic.

“Anytime you look out a window, it’s like, ‘Wow, look at that, there’s Italy.’ It looks like the map,” he said.

Walz retired from NASA in 2008.