ASTRONAUT WITH LOCAL TIES TAKES TO SPACE THREE TIMES IN '90s

Schoolchildren throughout the region watched on TV April 5, 1991, as a Southeast Missourian blasted into outer space for the first time.

Linda Godwin, a graduate of Jackson High School and Southeast Missouri State University, was aboard the space shuttle Atlantis. She and the other members of the crew spent six days 243 nautical miles above the Earth deploying the $617 million Gamma Ray Observatory.

The mission was a success, even though the antenna from the observatory refused to spring open. After several attempts to dislodge the antenna, one of the astronauts took an unscheduled walk in space and made the repairs.

When Godwin first went into space, five years had passed since the Challenger tragedy took the lives of all aboard. In a pre-flight interview with the Southeast Missourian, she said what happened will never be forgotten. She said the bad memories of that flight had been replaced by the good memories of those in the intervening years.

Her father, James Godwin, recalls that the danger to his daughter was on his mind during the mission. "Naturally a person thinks about it," he said. "It can be a kind of risky business."

He doesn't know when his daughter first became intrigued with going into outer space, but said, "We have always been interested in the space program, even from the very beginning when they selected the first astronauts. "Rocketry was always interesting to me," he said.

Linda Godwin applied to become an astronaut while pursuing her Ph.D. in physics at the University of Missouri at Columbia. She was turned down but was hired by NASA anyway.

Linda Godwin has taken three shuttle flights so far, has walked in space and has docked with the Mir space station. She married Steven Nagel, commander of the Atlantis mission, in 1995.

Godwin and his late wife, Maxine, went to Florida along with a number of other family members to watch all three liftoffs.

A fourth flight has not been scheduled, but he thinks it could happen. "She talks as if she's planning another flight," he said.

He is very proud of his daughter and not just for being an astronaut.

"She's a very capable person in a lot of ways," he said.