Joseph Acaba, former Melbourne High School science teacher turned veteran astronaut, has just been appointed Chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Photo Credit: Yahoo News
As an astronaut, Joseph Acaba has logged a total of 306 days in space on three flights, first as a mission specialist on the space shuttle Discovery, and twice aboard the International Space Station. And recently, this veteran astronaut was appointed as Chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office at Johnson Space Center in Houston, the first astronaut of Hispanic heritage selected to lead the office. But did you know that this accomplished individual was once a science and mathematics teacher?
Before his selection by NASA in 2004 as one of three “educator astronauts,” an initiative intended to build upon Challenger astronaut Christa McAuliffe’s Teacher in Space legacy, he spent his first year, 1999-2000, as a full-time teacher at Melbourne High School in Florida. There he taught freshman science before moving on to teach math and science in Dunnellon Middle School in Florida, where he remained for four years.
And that is not all of this Chalkboard Champion’s impressive employment history. Joe was a member of the United States Marine Corps Reserves. He also worked as a hydro-geologist in Los Angeles, California, primarily on Superfund sites. And he spent two years in the United States Peace Corps as an Environmental Education Awareness Promoter in the Dominican Republic. In addition, he worked for a time as the manager of the Caribbean Marine Research Center at Lee Stocking Island in the Exumas, Bahamas.
Joe once said that, as an educator astronaut, he hoped to reach out to minority students. On March 18, 2008, he traveled to Puerto Rico, where he was honored by the island’s senate. During his visit, Joe met with school children at the capitol and at Science Park located in Bayamon. Science Park boasts a planetarium and several surplus NASA rockets among its exhibits. Joe made a second trip to Puerto Rico on June 1, 2009. On that trip he spent seven days on the island and came into contact with over 10,000 citizens, most of them school children.
