As a Mission Specialist, Arnold will join five other astronauts delivering the final pair of power-generating solar array wings and truss element to complete the 361-foot-long backbone of the International Space Station. The wings and electronics in the truss will convert sunlight to power the orbiting laboratory.

This won’t be the first mission in an extreme environment for Arnold. This past August he served as a mission specialist for the 13^th NEEMO, the NASA Extreme Environments Mission Operations, where he lived and worked in and around Aquarius - the world’s only undersea laboratory. During the 10-day mission, the crew of NEEMO XIII conducted experiments and operations in a simulated lunar outpost in support of a future return to the Moon and exploration of Mars. 

Born in Cheverly and raised in Bowie, Arnold has degrees from Frostburg State University and the University of Maryland, College Park. He has taught science to students around the world, from Waldorf, MD to Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Romania. NASA posts the biographies of all the astronauts on line – read more about Richard Arnold here.

NASA selected Arnold as a Mission Specialist in 2004, and since then he has completed Astronaut Candidate Training that included scientific and technical briefings, intensive instruction in Shuttle and International Space Station systems, physiological training, T-38 flight training, and water and wilderness survival training.

Half the crew of Discovery will be making their first flight including Arnold. In a day when Space Shuttle flights are almost routine for the public, it’s exciting to have someone with a personal connection to Bowie orbiting the Earth and expanding our knowledge of our world.