St. John’s University Graduate Selected to Go to International Space Station

(KNSI) – NASA has assigned a St. John’s University graduate to travel to the International Space Station.

Astronaut Mark Vande Hei will serve as a flight engineer and member of the Expedition 64/65 crew. Vande Hei graduated from St. John’s in 1989 and will blast off on Friday, April 9th, aboard the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft from the Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Vande Hei (second from left in the above photo) is expected to assist in and perform hundreds of experiments while onboard the ISS. Among them are studies about Alzheimer’s disease and technology surrounding a portable ultrasound device.

First selected as an astronaut in 2009, Vande Hei was born in Virginia and raised in New Jersey and Minnesota. He earned a Bachelor of Science in physics from St. John’s University and is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army. His first completed space flight was in 2018 aboard Expedition 53/54. He launched in September of 2017 and spent 168 days in space, where he conducted four spacewalks before returning to Earth in February 2018.

Follow Vande Hei on Twitter by clicking here.

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