Captain Robert “Hoot” Gibson entered the United States Navy after college and served as a fighter pilot in the F-4 “Phantom” and F-14 “Tomcat” aircraft, flying combat missions in Southeast Asia and making more than 300 carrier landings aboard the aircraft carriers USS Coral Sea and USS Enterprise. After attending the Navy Fighter Weapons School, better known as TOPGUN, and the Navy Test Pilot School, he served as a flight test pilot prior to being selected to become an Astronaut in 1978 in the first Space Shuttle Astronaut selection. In eighteen years as an Astronaut, he flew five space flights, four of them as Mission Commander, aboard the space shuttles Challenger, Columbia, Atlantis, and Endeavour. His final space flight was the first mission to rendezvous and dock with the Russian Space Station Mir in 1995. In his career with NASA, he held the positions of Deputy Chief of NASA Aircraft Operations, Deputy Director of Flight Crew Operations, and Chief Astronaut.
In a flying career spanning more than sixty years, he has accumulated more than 14,000 hours of flight time in more than 160 types of military and civilian aircraft. He has received numerous honors, awards, and decorations and has established six Aviation World Records and three Space World Records.
Michelle Rouch has more than thirty-seven years of experience creating unique pieces of art inspired and informed by her technical knowledge as an engineer. Her artwork locks a moment in time for the public to pause and reflect, offering another dimension through which to promote aerospace technology. Rouch continues to develop new techniques to redefine the technical art genre with a contemporary approach. Children and parents alike have celebrated her illustrations for the children’s books
Astronaut Al Travels to the Moon by Apollo 15 Astronaut Al Worden and
Railroad to the Moon by Shuttle Astronaut Ron Garan, both published in 2021. Her art won first place honors at the 2023 American Society of Aviation Artists (ASAA) International Aerospace Art Exhibition.
Czarina Salido, a Indigenous Latina born in Nogales and raised in Tucson, Arizona, is the CEO of the Scientific Association for the Study of Time in Physics and Cosmology. She also serves as the program director of Taking Up Space, an astronaut supported program teaching STEM to mostly Native American girls ages 8 to 12, and is a fervent champion for education and diversity in STEM fields. Her journey, marked by overcoming many obstacles, has paved the way for her to become an inspiring leader and advocate for change helping others pursue their dreams and break barriers within traditionally underrepresented spaces.
