DANVILLE — A week after the space shuttle Atlantis successfully landed, Danville native and NASA astronaut Joe Tanner reflected on the STS-115 mission, saying it was the most rewarding experience of his career.

His fourth trip to space also definitely was his last.

“There are only 15 or 16 missions left, and I am blessed to have flown four times,” Tanner said Thursday during from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“It was bittersweet,” he said. “It was great to finish a mission you really cared about and trained for for a long time.”

Tanner said his family would like him to stay firmly planted on Earth.

“I have to stop stressing the people I love because of something I want to do,” he said. “My wife would like to have a normal family life.”

Tanner’s dad, Dr. William Tanner of Danville, admitted, “We’re not the type to get nervous, but we were relieved when he was back safe on Earth.

“He called us later that morning and reassured us everything was OK,” he said of Joe. “It usually takes two or three days until he feels normal again.”

Dr. Tanner and his wife, Dr. Megan Tanner, nearly missed watching the space shuttle land Sept. 21 on TV because it arrived on Earth around 4 a.m. rather than the scheduled time, 5:30 a.m.

“We had set the alarm clock, but one of our boys called us and said it was landing at 4 a.m.,” he said.

“Our son, John, called us. What he was doing up at that hour of the morning, I don’t know,” he joked of his son who is a plastic surgeon in Kansas City.

Tanner’s wife, Martha, their son, Will, and Joe’s twin brother, David, greeted the veteran astronaut when Atlantis landed at Cape Canaveral, Fla.

“It varies by individual, but it takes about a week to get back to normal,” Tanner said. “The dizziness only lasts a day or two.”

Dr. Tanner said he and his wife still are sorting through the mail that accumulated while they were gone 21 days to watch the space shuttle launch.

The STS-115 mission, which initially was scheduled to launch Aug. 27, finally blasted off 13 days later.

Tanner said the delay gave him and his five crew members “the time to mentally prepare and focus” for the mission.

It also allowed Tanner to share a shrimp dinner with his family in Cocoa Beach, Fla., and spend two days at home in Houston before returning to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and being quarantined again.

Knowing STS-115 was his last mission, Tanner made the most of it.

“I tried to enjoy every minute of it,” he said. “It was a busy flight, but the most rewarding.”

Installing the 17.5-ton, school-bus-sized truss with solar panels onto the International Space Station proved to be no easy task, with the national media reporting Tanner lost a bolt during the first of two space walks he made.

But Tanner said he wants to set the record straight: “I’m not that big of a klutz.”

The bolt, which was one-fourth of an inch in diameter, was spring-loaded, and when a retaining clip on one of the solar panels let go, the bolt floated out into space, he said.

“I never touched it,” he said. “We’re looking at ways to improve the design.”

Tanner said the bolt probably will re-enter the atmosphere in a month as a shooting star.

More bolt trouble eventually overshadowed his bolt incident, this time at the hands of Canadian Space Agency astronaut Steve MacLean.

During the second space walk made by MacLean and mission specialist Dan Burbank, a half-inch bolt became stuck and hin-dered the deployment of the arrays, or solar panels, system.

Tanner said the truss and solar array system was held together by 16 plates and six restraints when it was stowed on the space shuttle.

“If we could not remove any one of them, we would not be able to rotate the truss,” he said.

The stubborn bolt was in one of the six restraints.

Tanner was in the shuttle during that space walk, trying to talk MacLean and Burbank through ideas to free the bolt.

“There was a whole lot of tension in the cockpit at the time,” Tanner said.

Despite reports that debris was coming off the space shuttle during its descent, Tanner said he and the crew never felt in danger.

“Stuff comes out of the payload bay all the time,” he said. “We had total confidence in the condition of Atlantis.

“In fact, this was the cleanest vehicle after a mission. There were only six areas of damage larger than an inch, which is great,” he said.

Besides, Tanner’s first mission to space was aboard Atlantis, so “it’s kind of like my first love.”

Tanner also had confidence in the mission’s commander, Brent Jett. Jett had been the commander of STS-97 Endeavor in No-vember 2000, Tanner’s previous mission.

Tanner also praised his partner, Heide Piper, on their two space walks as “brilliant and innovative” and knows she will go far in the astronaut program.

“I hope we’re going to make her a lead on the next flight,” he said.



TANNER’S VISIT

Danville native and NASA astronaut Joe Tanner does not know when he’ll visit the Danville area, although he has received a number of requests for presentations.

Besides taking a gear shift knob from his son Will’s 1969 Camaro and a key fob from his son Matt’s Subaru into space, Tanner also brought along a number of small items from Bismarck-Henning and Danville schools.