In May the Museum released a special new video interview with former NASA Astronaut Woody Spring, who shared first-hand the sensation of launching from historic pad 39A, the launch site of the Apollo moon and space shuttle missions.

The video was released just days before the ground-breaking joint NASA and SPACEX two-man American flight to the International Space Station. The launch was an epic moment for modern space exploration, and Spring provided just the right insight to bring together the importance of the mission and American space capabilities.

The entire video can be viewed at https://youtu.be/u1FsWVcjy5Y.

During the interview, which was conducted by Museum President & CEO Jim Kidrick, Spring focuses on the launch from pad 39A of two Americans in a Dragon space capsule aboard a Falcon rocket, both of which were built on American soil by SPACEX. The launch was from the Kennedy Space Center, and it was the first launch of Americans into space from the United States since 2011 and the completion of the Space Shuttle program.

In the video, Spring also talks about the importance of future space travel, the unprecedented successes of Elon Musk and SpaceX, and teaching our next generations about Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) and Innovation.

During his NASA career, Spring spent more than 165 hours in space aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis, including 12 hours performing two EVAs, or space walks.

Spring is a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, where he earned a degree in Engineering. After graduation, he served two tours of duty in Vietnam, the first with the famed 101^st Airborne Division. The second tour came immediately after flight school, where he served as a helicopter pilot with the First Cavalry Division. When he returned from Vietnam, he earned a master’s degree from the University of Arizona in 1974.

After a short stint as a flight test engineer, he attended the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at NAS Patuxent River, before returning to the Army’s Flight Test Facility at Edwards Air Force Base to complete four years as an experimental test pilot before joining NASA. Today, Spring is a professor at the Defense Acquisition University.

The entire video can be viewed at https://youtu.be/u1FsWVcjy5Y.