Boilermaker astronaut credits Purdue University for opportunity

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Astronaut Loral O'Hara, the latest in a legacy of Purdue space travelers, will get her chance to explore the heavens on Friday when the 2009 graduate launches toward the International Space Station.

In 2017, O'Hara saw her name added to the university's "Cradle of Astronauts" — a moniker bestowed on Purdue for having, to date, 27 Boilermakers travel into space, the university stated in a news release. The "Cradle of Astronauts" includes Neil Armstrong, the first person to step foot on the moon in July 1969.

O'Hara's first shot at space aboard the Soyuz MS-23 had been scheduled for May of this year, according to the university, but a coolant leak on a Russian capsule docked at the space station meant that her spacecraft would need to be used to bring cosmonauts home.

On Friday, it's O'Hara turn to blast off. She'll become the 28th Boilermaker to travel into space.

The launch of the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft, with O'Hara and two cosmonauts, Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, is scheduled for 11:44 a.m. Eastern time Friday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, according to the Associated Press.

Kononenko, on his fifth flight, serves as commander. O'Hara and Chub will launch into space for the first time, according to the AP.

The spacecraft is expected to dock at the International Space Station at 2:56 p.m. Friday. O'Hara will begin a six-month mission in orbit.

Purdue launches another astronaut into space

O'Hara credits credits Purdue and mentor William Anderson, professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, with her space exploration, according to a Purdue news release. Anderson had recruited O'Hara for propulsion research at the Maurice J. Zucrow Laboratories at Purdue.

“The work that I got to do at Zucrow designing, building and testing hardware was really the first time I got to do that," O'Hara said in the release, "to take a project from the initial concept stage all the way through to test. All my work before that had been kind of analytical or more project management.

“Purdue set the stage for the rest of my career,” she said. “I realized I liked the design-build-test of hardware so much that it led me to my next job at Woods Hole (Oceanographic Institution), and onward from there.”

O'Hara's astronaut training began in 2017 and finished in 2020, the university stated. Her training included learning the Russian language, deemed quite helpful for astronauts traveling to the International Space Station.

She spent a year in Star City, where Russian cosmonauts train, serving as NASA's director of operations, the release stated.

“I really loved living there and working with the people there, so I was excited for the opportunity to fly on Soyuz. And I think that the experience of flying on another country’s rocket is very unique,” O’Hara stated in the release.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Boilermaker astronaut credits Purdue University for opportunity