Steve Gleason, West Point softball teammates travel to support Anne McClain for launch NASA officials say is moving forward Friday

Editor’s note: Spokesman-Review reporter Nick Gibson is in Florida this week to report on Anne McClain’s and NASA’s SpaceX launch from the Kennedy Space Center. Follow along in print and online at spokesman.com/sections/return-to-space.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Lilac City astronaut Anne McClain has a cadre of supporters well outside the confines of Spokane County.

The short list of friends and family members who made the trek to the United States’ southeastern tip to watch her set out on a voyage to space include her high school math teacher, half a dozen of her former West Point softball teammates and Congressional Gold Medal recipient Steve Gleason and family.

Gleason, who had to return to New Orleans after McClain’s launch was postponed, said on social media Wednesday he was grateful for the opportunity to support “a fellow Gonzaga Prep alumnus, all around badass, a hero of mine, and someone I’m happy to call a friend.”

McClain was one of several attendees to attend Gleason’s medal ceremony in 2020.

“Going to space is our greatest human achievement, in my view, and the International Space Station may be our best example of global collaboration,” Gleason wrote. “I’m grateful our family has the chance to witness the power of this launch.”

The U.S. Army Colonel and commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission had her takeoff delayed Wednesday following the discovery of a hydraulics system issue affecting one of the clamp arms holding the Falcon 9 rocket in place. NASA and SpaceX officials said in a news release Wednesday evening that they’ve completed the necessary inspection and work to the clamp arm hydraulics, and “successfully flushed a suspected pocket of trapped air in the system.”

McClain, fellow NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers, Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi had been strapped into the Dragon “Endurance” capsule atop the rocket when the launch was scrubbed around 45 minutes before the scheduled liftoff.

NASA and SpaceX are now targeting a Friday launch of 4:03 p.m. (Pacific Time), which will be live streamed through the agency’s free streaming service, NASA+.

For Crew-10, the delay means a few more moments with their loved ones, at a distance due to astronaut quarantine protocols, before they set off for the stars.

The lead-up to a crewed launch is littered with farewells, both private and public. Among the private moments are what’s referred to as the “wave across the ditch,” when astronauts can interact with their guests from afar. The tradition dates back decades, used to occur over an actual ditch, and usually happens a few days within an expected crew launch.

The members of Crew-10 pulled into a lot on the Kennedy Space Center Monday afternoon, where their friends and families were waiting for the “wave across,” said retired Gonzaga Prep math teacher Shari Manikowski. The groups were spread apart to provide some privacy between the space travelers and their respective supporters, and one-by-one, McClain went down the line exchanging pleasantries.

Manikowski said it was incredible to see at that event the spectrum of individuals who have all come to adore her former student, and at a separate pre-launch party Tuesday where the different support groups got to intermingle.

“I found myself really like starstruck, and I don’t get starstruck, especially with her because she’s Anne,” Manikowski said. “But it really kind of hit home, because I’ve always loved who she is more than what she’s accomplished. The significance of what she has accomplished and what she was about to accomplish just really hit home.”

In attendance to share their well wishes were several of McClain’s former Army Black Knights softball teammates, donned in variations of black team-branded shirts.

It was a no-brainer that the team would be there to see McClain off, said U.S. Army Lt. Col Dr. Christina O’Hara, an occupational medicine physician at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. McClain would be there to support any one of them if the roles were flipped, she said.

“That’s why we came, because Anne is super awesome, super smart, super kind, and if we need something, we know she’ll be there,” O’Hara said.

“She helped a lot of us with math at West Point, because it’s so easy for her,” she added with a chuckle.

Fellow former teammate and West Point graduate Bianca Britto echoed her sentiment, saying the team has done its best to stay in touch over the years. Some of the players were deployed together, or had overlap on assignments while everyone was still active duty, and they’ve celebrated each other’s weddings, promotions, retirement ceremonies and other milestones along the way.

“We try to stay connected and get together when we can,” Britto said. “And now it’s really cool, because a lot of us have kids, so now all of our kids are playing together on these little reunions.”

O’Hara and her husband, Michael Lucas, made the trip with their four kids, as did Britto and her six kids. Britto and O’Hara expressed how neat it was to watch their families interact with McClain, and the care and thoughtfulness she put into answering each of their children’s questions.

O’Hara said her 6-year-old daughter asked McClain how long it would take her to reach the ISS. Rather than responding with a time range, McClain made it more digestible for the kids.

“She said, ‘Well, think about this: By the time you leave Kennedy Space Center, I’ll have already orbited the Earth once,’ ” O’Hara recalled. “Then she says, ‘OK, so now think about this: It’s going to take me until tomorrow morning to get to the space station.”

“That was one of the things I personally thanked her for,” Britto said. “As she was doing the ‘wave across,’ she’s not like this celebrity figure that’s too fancy or too astronaut. She’s still Anne.”

None of her former teammates ever doubted that McClain would go on to reach her stated goal of becoming an astronaut, O’Hara said. She’s the smartest, sweetest and most driven person anyone of them know.

There was one moment at the “wave across” that hammered that home for O’Hara.

She recently lost her father, a former “hunter-killer” pilot in Vietnam, and he and McClain got along well. O’Hara wore his hat commemorating his service to the event, and McClain took a moment to snap a photo wearing it.

Before the sendoff came to a close, all five of the former Knights softball players and a squadron of Ayers’ former U.S. Air Force Academy volleyball teammates snapped an at-distance selfie with the two NASA astronauts. All of them wore the proper team attire, including Ayers and McClain beneath their blue jumpsuits.

“Sometimes you look at people and you’re like, ‘Oh, they’re just a dreamer,’ ” Britto said. “We never thought that about Anne. We always knew that whatever she pursued, that she was going to go for it and go for it full throttle.

“We’re so, so proud of her.”