SIOUX FALLS, SD (KELO) — A former NASA space shuttle astronaut has landed back in his home state of South Dakota.
Yankton native Chuck Gemar moved from Wichita, Kansas to Sioux Falls just over a month ago.
He looks back on how growing up in the open prairie served as his launching pad to space.
Returning to South Dakota has been a longtime goal of Chuck Gemar’s.
“I always say I spent the first 17 years of my life trying to figure out how I was going to get out of the state and the next fifty years to try and figure out how I could get back,” Gemar said.
As a boy, Gemar kept his aspirations of space exploration pretty much to himself.
“I grew up on the plains of South Dakota. There weren’t any astronauts from South Dakota and we didn’t know any astronauts. It’s not like they were down the street. There’s one on every corner in Houston, but that’s not the case here,” Gemar said.
So Gemar became NASA’s first South Dakota-born astronaut. He flew three missions aboard the space shuttle during the 1990’s. KELOLAND News covered the launch of his first shuttle flight in 1990.