Intro music playing.
Hundreds gathered at Florida's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex May 1 to watch
as five former Shuttle astronauts were inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame.
The astronauts inducted were:
Norm Thagard, the first American astronaut to launch on a Russian rocket and be a crew member on Russia's Mir space station;
Kathryn Sullivan, the first American woman to make a spacewalk;
Richard Covey, who piloted the first mission after the Challenger accident and commanded the 1993 Hubble repair mission;
and the late Dick Scobee, commander of the fateful Challenger mission.
Scobee's induction was accepted by his widow, June Scobee Rodgers.
Frederick Gregory, NASA's Deputy Administrator and the first African-American to command a space mission, was also inducted.
He is confident that NASA will continue to keep the dream of space exploration alive.
"And I think the opportunity and of course the NASA exploration vision, the nation's vision to head back to the Moon, then Mars
and beyond, is a kind of motivation and inspiration that encourages young students to look beyond what is the status quo."
Nearly 20 current Hall of Fame astronauts, such as John Glenn, Jim Lovell, and Bob Crippen, were on hand to honor the new inductees.