KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — Sen. Mark Kelly retired from NASA before his twin brother Scott, but it took him three years longer to be inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame.
“Scott, you beat me to this one, but as special as it is, or was, to be an astronaut, nothing compares to doing it with your clone,” Mark said Saturday during a ceremony for him and fellow astronaut, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Roy Bridges, under Space Shuttle Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
Bridges, a member of the second class of space shuttle astronauts chosen in 1980, flew on one space shuttle mission, STS 51-F, in 1985 aboard Space Shuttle Challenger, but also later served as the director at both NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and Langley Research Center.
Kelly, also a retired captain in the Navy, flew on four space shuttle missions, twice as pilot and twice as commander. His first flight was on Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-108 in 2001, the first shuttle mission after 9/11. He then flew again as pilot on STS-121 in 2006 on board Space Shuttle Discovery, the first mission after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster three years earlier. He flew on Discovery again as commander on STS-124 in 2008 and then commanded the last flight of Endeavour on STS-134 in 2011.
The two men became the 106th and 107th inductees to the hall of fame that was created in 1990 by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation and is represented at the visitor…
