Duane “Digger” Carey credits education as the defining element that led a child who grew up in public housing in St. Paul, Minnesota, to a successful career as an astronaut who piloted a shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope in 2002.

“Why would NASA want a kid from the projects who didn’t like science?” Carey asked a crowd of 175 people, including 75 middle school and junior high students from local schools, during a Feb. 25 colloquium at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

“I had that magic piece of paper,” he said. “I had that Master of Science degree in my back pocket. It didn’t matter how I grew up. If you give yourself that power, you have that the rest of your life.”

Three groups of local middle and junior high school students visited UALR to hear Carey’s speech. One of the students from Cloverdale Middle School’s Aerospace Club asked Carey about the most amazing thing he saw in space.

“I can’t describe how beautiful it is to see the Earth from space. I cannot explain why the Earth is beautiful, but you never get tired of looking at the Earth from space,” he said.

William Grafton, a seventh- and eighth-grade aerospace teacher at Cloverdale Middle School, was glad his students could hear Carey’s journey to become an astronaut.

“This was a great opportunity for the kids to see how a normal person becomes an astronaut,” Grafton said. “I wanted my students to see that. Everyone thinks astronauts are these super amazing people, but ordinary people become astronauts, too.”

Carey spent most of his childhood with his mother and two younger siblings. His father left when he was 6, and Carey developed an aversion to school.

“School felt like a prison to me. When that bell went off at the end of the day, I felt like I was finally free to do what I wanted,” he said, adding that he regrets not putting more emphasis on school when he was younger.

“I tell middle school kids that this is the time when kids start to make important choices,” he said. “Do I take the minimum-required math course or do I take the much-feared advanced class? Sometimes you learn the most from the hardest things. I have found that learning math makes learning other things easier.”

Carey graduated from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering and mechanics in 1981 and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering in 1982. He received his commission from the Reserve Officer Training Corps in 1981 and graduated from undergraduate pilot training in 1983.

He flew over 30 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm over Iraq. In 1991, he was selected to attend the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Having been selected as an astronaut candidate in 1996, Carey completed two years of training and evaluation at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston before qualifying for flight assignment as a pilot.

Carey logged more than 10 days in space during his first space flight. In 2002, he served as pilot on STS-109 Columbia during the fourth servicing mission for the Hubble Space Telescope.

“No mission before had ever attempted to do five consecutive spacewalks in five consecutive days,” he said. “Usually, the demands are so arduous on the crew that you take a day off between spacewalks, but we signed up to do five in a row.”

The crew of STS-109 successfully upgraded the Hubble Space Telescope, leaving it with a new power unit, a new camera, and new solar arrays. STS-109 orbited the Earth 165 times, and covered 3.9 million miles in over 262 hours.

Having retired from NASA in 2004, Carey travels with his wife, Cheryl, advocating for the importance of education and exploration programs. When the weather permits, they travel on motorcycles and camp outside.

Carey and his wife have plans of continuing this nomadic lifestyle through “One World, One Child, One Dream.” Their mission is to reach children in every nation on Earth via motorcycle travel.

After fixing up two motorcycles, the couple eventually hopes to advocate the importance of education to the people of Mexico and South America.

“You see what education did for me. It gave me all the opportunities I could ever wish for. If you want to see the future of America, go to a school,” he said.

The colloquium was sponsored by the Arkansas Space Grant Consortium, based at UALR. For more information on Duane Carey, visit www.astronautbiker.com.

In the photo, former astronaut Duane “Digger” Carey speaks to a student about his 2002 mission to the Hubble Space Telescope during a colloquium at UALR on Feb. 25.