SIOUX FALLS, SD (KELO) — A former NASA space shuttle astronaut has landed back in his home state of South Dakota.
Yankton native Chuck Gemar moved from Wichita, Kansas to Sioux Falls just over a month ago.
He looks back on how growing up in the open prairie served as his launching pad to space.
Returning to South Dakota has been a longtime goal of Chuck Gemar’s.
“I always say I spent the first 17 years of my life trying to figure out how I was going to get out of the state and the next fifty years to try and figure out how I could get back,” Gemar said.
As a boy, Gemar kept his aspirations of space exploration pretty much to himself.
“I grew up on the plains of South Dakota. There weren’t any astronauts from South Dakota and we didn’t know any astronauts. It’s not like they were down the street. There’s one on every corner in Houston, but that’s not the case here,” Gemar said.
So Gemar became NASA’s first South Dakota-born astronaut. He flew three missions aboard the space shuttle during the 1990’s. KELOLAND News covered the launch of his first shuttle flight in 1990.
“Just over 10 minutes ago, Shuttle Atlantis lifted-off. It was a beautiful sight here. The sky lit-up, the ground shook,” KELOLAND TV reporter Jessica Armstrong said in 1990.
Veteran astronauts struggled to describe to Gemar what a space flight was like back when he was in training. Gemar would have to find out for himself.
“The best part of space flight is from that vantage point above the globe looking back at the planet and just watching continent after continent after continent slowly fade in the distance,” Gemar said.
While Gemar is earthbound back in South Dakota, he’ll still take off on a flight every once and a while traveling around the world teaching STEM fields to students.
“In my most immediate future, we’re going to be doing programs in Malaysia this year, New York City in October. Next year, we’ll be in Saudi Arabia in the month of February, China in January,” Gemar said.
Gemar is still getting settled into his new home in downtown Sioux Falls. Ultimately, the high point of flying into space couldn’t overcome the gravitational pull of his home state.
Gemar has been following the developments aboard the International Space Station where two American astronauts scheduled to be in space for only eight days will now have to wait until February to return.
Gemar credits NASA for being overly cautious in waiting to bring a new capsule to the space station to ensure their safe return home.
The Boeing Starliner capsule that brought the astronauts to the ISS landed in New Mexico Friday night.
