After years of treating astronauts, Dr. Tom Marshburn will become one next Saturday.
On that day, Marshburn, a Statesville native who graduated from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in 1989, will be one of seven astronauts on the space shuttle Endeavour for a 16-day mission.
The mission will feature five spacewalks and complete construction of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory.
Astronauts will attach a platform to the outside of the Japanese module that will allow experiments to be exposed to space.
Also, astronaut Tim Kopra will replace Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata on the International Space Station. Wakata will return to earth after a three-month stay at the station.
"I've always been interested in the space program, ever since I was 6 or 7 years old," Marshburn said in an interview after his crew's pre-flight news conference in Houston last month.
Marshburn, 49, is one of four crew members making their first trip into space.
The youngest of seven children, Marshburn grew up near Bost Street and Davie Avenue in Statesville, where his father was the pastor of First Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.
He moved to Atlanta when he was almost 9.
He "fell madly" in love with medicine, which led him to Wake Forest.
After graduation, he trained in emergency medicine at the St. Vincent Hospitals' program in Toledo, Ohio.
Marshburn came to NASA's Johnson Space Center in November 1994 as a flight surgeon and was selected for NASA's astronaut training program in May 2004.
Dr. James Toole, a professor of neurology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, did research at the beginning of the astronaut program.
He said that he misses being part of the program.
"I think it's exciting," he said last week. "I wish I was young and could do it again."
Those who become astronauts have to be able to respond calmly to unexpected events, he said.
And they have to be patient because moving quickly doesn't work in space, where there's no gravity, Toole said.
"It takes a very brave person to do that," he said. "You're stuck in a tube and you can't get out."
Marshburn said he is looking forward to his shuttle flight.
"I just cannot wait to experience zero-G," he said, jokingly. "I can't wait to work in it, even."
■ Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com.
■ Jill Michaels, a freelance writer for The Statesville Record & Landmark, contributed to this story.
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