The U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame will honor its 2025 class of inductees, record-setting space travelers Peggy Whitson and Bernard Harris, at a public ceremony in Florida this spring. There is a possibility, though, that one of the honorees will not be able to be able to attend the festivities. That is because, at the time, Whitson may be back in space.
Although the Hall of Fame's rules require that all inductees be retired from NASA's astronaut corps, the criteria says nothing about flying commercially. Whitson left the agency's ranks in 2018 and then joined Axiom Space, a Houston-based space services company, for which she has already commanded one private mission to the International Space Station (ISS) and is currently set to fly another this spring.
If the May 31 ceremony and Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) overlap — the launch is currently targeted for no earlier than late April, but it could slip — then Whitson will be the first person to enter the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame while in orbit, after 109 enshrinements on the ground.
