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EARTH WRITTEN BY ANTONIA DEPACE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE
Astronaut Daniel Bursch’s lightship baskets in orbit
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t was 1969 when 11-year-old Daniel Bursch saw a glimpse of his future. He was at summer camp, propped up against the radio, listening as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. “That was the first time I thought, ‘Oh, that might be something I could do … to become an astronaut,’” he says. “That started the spark.” Fast forward 55 years and Bursch is now a retired NASA astronaut and U.S. Navy captain living between California and his family cottage in Tom Nevers on Nantucket. During his NASA career, which began in 1990 after first serving in the Navy, he launched into space four times—one of which included six and a half months on the International Space Station (ISS). “On my first flight I remember being up there and just having to pinch myself as we flew over the Earth at five miles a second,” he says.
Official portrait of astronaut Daniel W. Bursch, Mission Specialist
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