St. Louis history was made in space Monday night.

Local Astronaut Bob Behnken Makes Spacewalking History

Astronaut Major Bob Behnken, 37, who grew up in St. Ann, Missouri, graduating from Pattonville High and Washington University, performed the first of his three scheduled spacewalks.   

Add his feat to St. Louis’s
rich aeronautics and space history, dating to the days of Charles
Lindbergh and the McDonnell Mercury and Gemini space capsules built in St. Louis. 

Behnken worked on a robot Monday night.  The robot, nicknamed "Dextre", is designed to handle exterior repairs at the International Space Station.    

"What
they’re working on now is calibrating the robotic hand," said David
Ritchey, as he watched a live feed of the spacewalk on NASA’s web site. 

Ritchey is a space buff and Associate Director of Visitor Experience at the St. Louis Science Center’s Planetarium. 

He
said Behnken’s space walk would certainly build interest in science,
especially among young people in St. Louis, but also do a lot more:
every move Behnken and his fellow astronauts made, Ritchey said, was
important not just to NASA, but to humanity, plotting a roadmap through
space; a  life-threatening task.

"Any spacewalk is one of the most dangerous things any astronaut can undertake," Ritchey said.  "Once you connect all these dots, where it’s leading us, is back to the moon, then ultimately onto Mars, then who knows where."

Washington University biomedical engineer Dr. Sal Sutera remembered Behnken as a student from the late 80’s into the early 90’s.

"He
doesn’t look very much different from what I remembered," he said,
referring to recent pictures of Behnken he’d seen from the mission.

Sutera said Behnken followed in his footsteps after graduating from Washington University, getting his Master’s and Doctorate degrees from the California Institute of technology within 4 years, a daunting task.  

Sutera
said thousands of his students went on to excel in life, but Behnken’s
achievements were, by their very nature, unmatched.

"We always have sort of a fatherly attitude toward our students," he said.  "When one of them really succeeds in an endeavor like this … you can’t help but being proud."

Behnken’s spacewalk Thursday could be even more significant.  He’ll be testing a kind of "space" spackle to repair damaged heat tiles on the space shuttle. 

That could prove critical in August, when astronauts repair the Hubble space telescope.