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On a Wing and a Prayer

On a Wing and a Prayer: Astronaut Douglas Wheelock Returns Home Safely

As a nine-year-old boy watching Apollo 11 land on the moon, Douglas Wheelock never dreamed he would grow up to be an astronaut, let alone walk in space. “I just couldn’t dream that big,” says the 47-year-old NASA spacewalker who grew up as an “ordinary kid in an ordinary little town and ordinary school” in Windsor, New York. Yet it was there he aspired to fly and eventually went to West Point, then on to flight school to become a test pilot and finally to NASA as an astronaut. With each new opportunity, he set his goals a little higher. In late October, as a crew member aboard Discovery’s STS-120 shuttle, he reached the heavens themselves, where he faced formidable challenges and found renewed faith.

The Outer Limits

Doug’s third spacewalk marked the most challenging part of the shuttle mission, as he and Scott Parazynski were sent into the blackness of space to repair a damaged solar array at the end of the port side of the International Space Station. The dangers were many. “We had not trained for it,” says Doug. “We were going further out than we had ever been. We were operating around a solar array that wasn’t meant to be operated around. We could not control the electricity flowing through it.” The entire crew rallied to prepare the two spacewalkers, wrapping the tools and metal parts on their suits with tape, creating homemade stabilizers to repair the array, and talking through their strategy. “We need to be there for each other,” Scott, the lead spacewalker, told his rookie teammate before their venture into space.

Doug recognized the weight of Scott’s words. “I had never felt the heaviness of the importance of teamwork until that day and the preceding night when I saw the team come together.”

“I prayed then, and I prayed while we were out there: ‘Lord, please, guide my hands so that I don’t touch or arc anything from this array to the tools, and please take care of Scott while he’s up on the array.” For 7 hours and 20 minutes, the two of them battled extreme 300-degree temperature swings every 45 minutes as they encountered the heat of the sun followed by the cold of the sun’s eclipse on the backside of the earth. Doug watched from the truss and gave direction to Scott, who made the repairs.

During the long hours, Doug also meditated on Bible verses attached to his “kneeboard” (Velcro patches on his thigh that held a mini-clipboard)—“a neat way to continue my worship and to not forget what a privilege it was to be there,” he says. (Memorizing Scripture is something Doug began as a boy in the Awana program at his church, earning an award for memorizing hundreds of verses.)

In spite of the dangers, Doug sensed God’s protection; “I had this feeling that I was right in the middle of the palm of His hand.” As he looked at the earth from space, he was awed and humbled by what his eyes beheld.

A Living Planet

“It’s very emotional; a very, very spiritual moment because from that perspective, you can see even more so the beauty of creation when you look and see the earth just suspended in space,” he says.
In addition to perceiving a true sense of speed, Doug marveled at the earth’s cloud patterns and colors—“the blues of the ocean, the white capped mountains, everything is so vibrant! You look at the earth and think, This is something that’s alive—it’s a living being.”

When Doug turned his head and looked into space, the contrast was obvious. “It’s very inhospitable, very cold, very vast, and just without end,” he says. “You begin to think how small you really are in the whole scheme of things.” His most profound recollection was being able to see the curvature of the earth against the backdrop of a sunrise and detect the “extremely thin” atmosphere. “It’s more like a glow off the planet, and it’s breathtaking,” he says. There was no mistaking what he was seeing: “It’s God’s creation, and we’re placed on this beautiful place sitting in the middle of this vast, cold, dark solar system and universe,” he says.

“If I ever had any doubt, it was wiped away when I was able to see that,” he says. “You begin to realize that there’s no possible way this could have come together with just an explosion or some sort of coincidental occurrence. It was planned; it’s beautiful; it’s indescribable.”

In those sacred moments in space, Doug silently worshiped his Creator. “I had tears in my eyes, just singing ‘How Great Thou Art’ to myself and thinking, ‘I cannot believe that I’ve been given this privilege, you know, to be able to view such beauty from this perspective.” Looking at the earth made Doug homesick. “It made me think, ‘Man, what a beautiful place we live in!”

A Time of Thanksgiving

When the solar array was fixed and successfully deployed, the team cheered. It was one of NASA’s finest hours. Doug had barely taken his helmet and gloves off when shuttle commander Pam Melroy presented him with a special award for showing courage in a space flight environment. He was humbled and grateful to be part of the team.

Although Doug was glad to return to solid Earth and the embrace of his wife and daughter, he is eager to go back into space, with hopes of being the lead spacewalker. After that, his goal is to be the commander on the International Space Station, involving a six-month expedition.

Meanwhile, Doug wants to continue using his experience to inspire young people to set goals and reach their full God-given potential. “It’s your solemn obligation to reach as high as you can reach,” he tells young people in schools and church youth groups. “I tell them, ‘Listen, I was 38 when I was selected as an astronaut, so that was 20 years after I graduated from high school; that was a continual process of seeking out where I was supposed to be,’” he says.

Doug’s first trip into space strengthened his faith and resolve to “spread the Word,” he says. “Most people aren’t ever going to see creation from that vantage point, so for me to take that message out there and to share with them how it’s increased my resolve and my walk is part of my duty to Him.”

Linda Piepenbrink is an editor with Regular Baptist Press.