Discovery’s last crew all experienced space fliers

The 46-year-old Air Force colonel would like nothing more than to fly whatever spacecraft replaces the shuttle. He’s drawn to the aerospace field, in large part, because it’s “where technology’s going, where the planet is going.”

He hopes to capture special moments during the flight in his mind so he can remember them forever.

“Trying to get that mental snapshot,” he said.

This is the second shuttle mission for Boe, who’s from Atlanta. He became an astronaut in 2000.

He and wife Kristen have a 12-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son.

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Navy Capt. Stephen Bowen is closing out his space shuttle-flying career with an extra mission.

NASA tapped Bowen to fill in for the mission’s lead spacewalker, Timothy Kopra, who had to bow out following a bicycle wreck near his Houston-area home in mid-January. Bowen was a natural choice: He’d flown to the space station on the previous shuttle mission and performed two spacewalks.

Bowen is the first astronaut to fly back-to-back shuttle missions.

He said he has “big shoes to fill,” and he praised Kopra and astronaut Benjamin Alvin “Al” Drew Jr. for pulling together the spacewalks.

“I hope to be able to execute the plan as well as I can,” Bowen said. “I’m sure I won’t be able to fill it as well as Tim and Al could, but we’ll see how this works out.”

This will be the third shuttle flight for Bowen, 47, the first submarine officer to be chosen as an astronaut. His missions have unfolded in unusually rapid succession: November 2008, May 2010 and now February 2011.

He grew up in Cohasset, Mass., helping in his father’s tiling business. He and wife Deborah have three teenage children.

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Benjamin Alvin “Al” Drew Jr. can remember wanting to be a pilot as young as 4.

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