Mainer Charles ‘Scorch’ Hobaugh to pilot shuttle

U.S. Marine Corp. Lt. Col. Charles Hobaugh

Age: 45

Hometown: Bar Harbor, Maine

Family: Married, four children

Hobaugh goes by the nickname “Scorch” but he refuses to reveal how he got it.

“It’s a closely held family secret,” he said. “You get a nickname with stuff you’re not necessarily proud of.”

Hobaugh graduated with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and was commissioned by the U.S. Marine Corps in 1984. He was designated a naval aviator in 1987 and later flew combat missions in the Persian Gulf during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. He graduated from Naval Test Pilot School in 1992 and two years later became an instructor there.

NASA chose him to be an astronaut in 1996 and he flew his first shuttle flight aboard Atlantis in 2001 on a construction mission to the international space station. Hobaugh was the astronaut in Mission Control who talked to the crew when space shuttle Columbia broke apart during re-entry in 2003, killing seven astronauts. He got no reply during the shuttle’s doomed descent when he kept asking, “Comm check.”

“It was, of course, a devastating loss at the time,” Hobaugh said recently. “But we all understand the risks. We all accept the risks.”