Up for
auction “Mission Specialist STS-135” Rex J. Walheim Hand Signed 4X6 Color
Photo
ES-9064E
Rex Joseph Walheim (born
October 10, 1962) is a retired United States Air Force officer, engineer and NASA astronaut. He flew three Space Shuttle missions, STS-110, STS-122, and STS-135. Walheim logged over 566 hours in space, including 36
hours and 23 minutes of spacewalk (EVA) time. He was assigned as mission specialist and flight engineer on STS-135, the final Space Shuttle mission. Walheim was born
in Redwood City, California,
but considers San Carlos, California,
his hometown. Walheim graduated from San Carlos High School in
1980 and received a Bachelor of Science degree
in mechanical engineering from
the University of California,
Berkeley in 1984. He then received a Master of Science degree in industrial engineering from
the University of Houston in
1989. Walheim was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Air Force in May
1984. In April 1985 he was assigned to Cavalier Air Force Station in Cavalier, North Dakota,
where he worked as a missile warning operations crew commander. In October
1986, he was reassigned to the Johnson Space Center,
in Houston, Texas, where he
worked as a mechanical systems flight controller and was the lead operations engineer
for the Space Shuttle landing
gear, brakes, and emergency runway barrier. Walheim was transferred to
Headquarters Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colorado,
in August 1989, where he was manager of a program upgrading missile warning
radars. He was selected for USAF Test Pilot School in
1991, and attended the course at Edwards AFB in California in 1992. Following graduation,
he was assigned to the F-16 Combined Test Force at Edwards
where he was a project manager, and then commander of the avionics and armament
flight. In January 1996, Walheim became an instructor at USAF Test Pilot
School, where he served until he began astronaut training. Walheim served as a
flight controller and operations engineer at the Johnson Space Center from
October 1986 to January 1989. He was selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate
in March 1996 and reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1996. Having
completed two years of training and evaluation, he was qualified for flight
assignment as a mission specialist. Initially, Walheim was assigned technical
duties in the Astronaut Office Space Station Operations Branch. Walheim flew
three flights, STS-110, STS-122 and STS-135, the final flight of the shuttle, logging over 566
hours in space, including over 36 hours and 23 minutes of EVA time. After his
first flight, he was assigned to the EVA branch, where he served as the astronaut
office representative for the Extra Vehicular Mobility Unit (the EVA spacesuit). In September 2002, Walheim served as an aquanaut on the joint NASA-NOAA NEEMO 4 expedition (NASA Extreme
Environment Mission Operations), an exploration research mission held in Aquarius, the world's
only undersea research laboratory,
four miles off shore from Key Largo. Walheim and his crewmates spent
five days saturation diving from
the Aquarius habitat as a space analogue for
working and training under extreme environmental conditions. The mission was
delayed due to Hurricane Isadore,
forcing National Undersea Research Center managers to shorten it
to an underwater duration of five days. Then, three days into their underwater
mission, the crew members were told that Tropical Storm Lili was headed in their direction and to
prepare for an early departure from Aquarius. However, Lili degenerated to the
point where it was no longer a threat, so the crew was able to remain the full
five days. During the inauguration of Barack
Obama on January 20, 2009, in Washington, D.C., Walheim marched in the parade carrying an
American flag and wearing a prototype of NASA's next generation spacesuit.