Kimbrough Named Honorary Georgia Tech Letterwinner

THE FLATS – Georgia Tech alumnus and NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough (Col., U.S. Army, Ret.) has been named an honorary GT letterwinner, Tech athletics announced on Friday. Kimbrough was presented an official Georgia Tech letterwinner’s jacket by director of athletics Todd Stansbury during an online ceremony.

An Atlanta native, Kimbrough earned a master’s degree in operations research from Georgia Tech in 1998. He attended the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. as an undergraduate, where he was four-year baseball student-athlete and team captain for the Black Knights as a senior in 1989. As a member of the U.S. Army, he served as a helicopter pilot in the first Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) in 1991 and later served as a professor at West Point.

Kimbrough joined NASA in 2000 and completed his first space flight in 2008. In 2016, he returned to space as part of Expedition 49/50 to the International Space Station, serving as Commander of the ISS for nearly six months. During his first ISS expedition, he sent a good luck message to Georgia Tech football prior to its game versus Virginia in 2016 and also proudly displayed a “Give ‘Em Hell Tech” flag from the Ramblin’ Wreck at the ISS, which he officially returned to the Institute during an on-field ceremony at halftime of Tech football’s 2017 contest versus Wake Forest.

In July, NASA announced that Kimbrough will return to the ISS as part of SpaceX Crew-2, serving as spacecraft commander. The Crew-2 astronauts are targeted to launch in the spring and expected to remain aboard the ISS for approximately six months.

The online ceremony awarding Kimbrough with his GT letterwinner’s jacket included comments from Kimbrough, Stansbury, former Georgia Tech football coach Bill Curry, Letterwinners Club executive director Lucius Sanford and Bobby Dodd Foundation chairman and Tech athletics consultant Jim Terry.

In addition to his letterwinner’s jacket, Kimbrough was also presented with a number of Yellow Jackets apparel items that he may be able to take to the ISS, space permitting, including a customized Georgia Tech baseball jersey (bearing his own collegiate jersey number, No. 22) and a pair of official GT/adidas football gloves.

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