Mark L. Polansky

Origins and early life

Mark Lewis Polansky's father, Irving, was Jewish; his mother, Edith, came from Hawaii and was of Korean descent. He was raised as a Jew — the stated route by which he is here — and when he flew as commander of STS-116 in December 2006 he honoured that side of the family by carrying into orbit a teddy bear from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Work and career

The same two parents made him, on his first flight, the first person of Korean ancestry in space. He left J. P. Stevens High School in Edison, New Jersey, in 1974, took two degrees in aeronautics from Purdue by 1978, and was commissioned into the Air Force: F-15s at Langley, then the F-5E as an Aggressor pilot teaching crews to beat enemy tactics, then test pilot school in 1986 and weapons testing at Eglin. He came to NASA in 1992 as a research pilot, teaching astronauts how to land a Space Shuttle before he was selected as one in 1996.

He flew STS-98 in February 2001, which delivered the Destiny laboratory to the International Space Station; commanded STS-116 in December 2006, which rewired the station's power; and commanded STS-127 in 2009. He retired from the astronaut corps on 30 June 2012 with more than 5,000 flight hours in over thirty aircraft. His crewmates called him “Roman”, a joke about the film director whose surname he almost shares.