An Evans High School graduate made sure Monday's predawn launch of the space shuttle Endeavor went off without a hitch.
Dana Hutcherson is NASA's flow director for Endeavour, overseeing maintenance and repairs to the craft before and after each launch.
"We just ensure everything is ready to fly and everything is ready to go," the 32-year-old engineer told a group of pupils last year at Evans Middle School, where she went to school.
Endeavour and its six-member crew are on a 13-day mission to install the last major module for the International Space Station. It is the first of two final missions Endeavour will fly before NASA shuts down the shuttle program.
It was in middle school that Hutcherson began developing her love of math and science.
"I was going to a careers project where I had to interview someone, and I talked to a woman engineer," she told the Evans Middle pupils. "I just thought that was something I could do."
She earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech and a master's degree in engineering management from the University of Central Florida. She lives near Kennedy Space Center.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Endeavour and six astronauts rocketed into orbit before dawn Monday on what's likely the last nighttime launch for the shuttle program, hauling a new room and observation deck for the International Space Station.
There are just four more missions scheduled this year before the shuttles are retired.
The shuttle is set to arrive at the station early Wednesday. It is carrying Tranquility, a new room that will eventually house life-support equipment, exercise machines and a toilet. Also on the way is a seven-windowed dome. The lookout has the biggest window ever sent into space, a circle 31 inches across.
-- Associated Press
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