Location: NC 101 at Airport Road, by Michael J. Smith Field in Beaufort
County: Carteret
Original Date Cast: 2018
Beaufort native Michael J. Smith was just twenty-four when he watched, along with countless others around the globe, Neil Armstrong take man’s first step on the moon. Right then and there, he determined to become an astronaut. In hindsight, it seems like a logical next step for Smith, who first learned to fly at fifteen and had taken his first solo flight at sixteen. The young man was so obsessed with flying that while quarterbacking the Beaufort Sea Dogs football team he once called a timeout just to watch a military plane fly overhead.
Determined to fly in space, Smith left the family farm for the U.S. Naval Academy in June 1963 at age eighteen. Upon graduation four years later, he entered Naval Postgraduate School and obtained a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering. Flight training at Pensacola, Florida, and advanced jet flight training at Kingsville, Texas, followed his academic training. He received his aviator wings in May 1969. Smith’s Navy career consisted of a couple of stints as a flight instructor, an assignment in Vietnam that saw him fly 198 missions, and more flight training at the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School. He trained to fly twenty-eight different aircraft and logged 4,868 hours of flight time.
Smith was accepted as an astronaut candidate in May 1980 and completed the necessary training and evaluation period to be qualified as a shuttle pilot by August of the following year. He soon rose to the rank of commander and served in a variety of leadership roles within NASA. As he waited for his turn to fly in space, he supported operations in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Lab, the Flight Operations Directorate, and the Astronaut Office Development and Test Group, to name a few.
The call Smith long awaited finally came in 1985 when he was tapped to pilot the Challenger on its tenth mission the following year. Tragically, the flight proved to be both Smith’s first and last. Just seventy-three seconds after launch on January 28, 1986, an o-ring seal in one of Challenger’s two solid rocket boosters suffered a critical failure, leading to the disintegration of the shuttle over the Atlantic Ocean. The lives of all seven crew members were lost.
To date, Smith is one of twenty-four American astronauts to have lost their lives in the line of duty. In recognition of his sacrifice, he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor (only twenty-eight have been awarded to date) by President George W. Bush in 2004. Additionally, his commendations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Navy Distinguished Flying Cross, the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Silver Star, thirteen Strike Flight Air Medals, three Air Medals, and the Navy Commendation Medal with “V.”
References:
“Pilot of Challenger is Buried with Full Rites at Arlington,” New York Times, May 4, 1986
“3 Boys’ Dreams of Space; 3 Deaths in the Sky,” New York Times, February 11, 1986
"Michael J. Smith (Captain, USN) NASA Astronaut (Deceased)," Biographical Data, NASA, accessed December 2, 2018