Most days, Tony Antonelli rolls to work in a 1989 Ford pickup, rarely exceeding the speed limit along the way.

Come Feb. 12, he will be pushing speeds of Mach 25 — about 17,500 mph — from the cockpit of the space shuttle Discovery.

Antonelli, a Navy commander and NASA astronaut, is piloting Discovery’s next mission to the international space station. He will become one of only two astronauts with Fayetteville ties to go out of this world.

Dr. Ellen Baker, part of the first space shuttle mission to dock with the Russian space station Mir, was born in Fayetteville but claims New York City as her hometown.

Dominic A. “Tony” Antonelli, who was born in Detroit, lived in Fayetteville during the first half of the 1980s. He attended Douglas Byrd High School from the ninth grade through graduation in 1985.

He left Fayetteville to study aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

These days, the 41-year-old Antonelli lives in Houston, home to NASA’s Johnson Space Center. In July 2000, he was selected as part of an astronaut training group to prepare pilots, engineers and scientist astronauts for space shuttle flights.

Nearly nine years later, Antonelli’s time has come. He will be making his first mission into orbit.

Discovery’s STS-119 mission is scheduled to lift off at 7:32
a.m. on the second Thursday of February.

Anthony ‘Tony’ Antonelli

“It was one of the things I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember,” Antonelli said. “From as far back as I can remember wanting to do anything, this was always on the short list.”

For the 14-day mission, the space shuttle will journey about 200 miles above Earth. As pilot of the seven-member crew, Antonelli will assist with the initial rendezvous and docking with the space station before unlocking Discovery at mission’s end.

“So far, I haven’t flown in space,” Antonelli said. “But I’m hoping that getting to fly in space will be pretty terrific.”

Antonelli, who is married and the father of two sons, said he is focusing on the flight, spending much of his time reading up on the crew’s assignments. “I’m trying to be prepared to do the stuff they ask me to do on this mission,” he said. “I’m not much for a desk job.”

His mother, Pam, takes credit for her son’s early fascination with the space program. She was celebrating a birthday with her two children when astronaut Neil Armstrong set foot on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969.

“They knew how I thought how important the space program was,” she said. “I remember when he was going off to MIT. Two weeks before he went off, I was giving him a lecture. A lot of people don’t know when they’re 18 what they want to do in life. I said, ‘Have you thought about what you want to be?’ He said, ‘Aeronautics and astronauting.’

“I think we all want heroes. And, you know, there are very few that set great examples. Most get too much money in their pocket and do outrageous things. I really think the space program is the future.”

Pam Antonelli is a librarian with the Houston Public Library. It was a sales job that brought her to Fayetteville as a single mother, raising Tony and his older sister, Sarah. She earned her undergraduate degree in psychology at Fayetteville State University before returning to Indiana to work on her master’s degree.

Her son, Pam Antonelli said, was always studious and goal-oriented. Besides being quiet and well-behaved, Tony has a good sense of humor, she said.

Tony Antonelli has a slightly different opinion of himself. He said he was “mostly a troublemaker,” someone unwilling to accept what he was told.

His mother said she doesn’t remember a lot about their life in Fayetteville, and she has never returned. She said they lived on a limited income.

“I always pushed college on scholarship,” she said. “The Navy came his way by Thanksgiving of his senior year. The Navy gave him a scholarship that said he could pick his school and his major. I’m a real school snob. When he was in the second grade, I was already talking about MIT.”

Tony Antonelli remembers some dedicated teachers and great football teams during his days at Douglas Byrd. He said he was probably as smart as he has ever been at that stage of his life.

“I only got to go to school one place,” he said. “It was absolutely the best high school ever.”

Richard Sneed was a close friend at the time. Sneed, who is 42, teaches physical science and physics at Gray’s Creek High School.

“I tell his story as an example to students,” Sneed said. “Basically, he had a lot of drive. He always seemed to know what he wanted. The point of my story: It’s not so important where your grades are or where you finish. Set your mind on what you want to do, and you’re going to get it done.”

Patty Driggers taught the future spaceman in his senior year at Douglas Byrd. If memory serves her right, Antonelli was in her advanced placement English class. She remembers a quiet young man: bright, studious and very serious.

“You know he’s going to succeed. His grades were always outstanding. He was outstanding,” she said. “I remember that about him. But I never thought he would become an astronaut.”

Driggers didn’t find out until three or four years ago that her former student was in the space program.

“He’s one of those students you just never forget,” she said. “I’ve taught some outstanding students. I just remember Tony being one of those.”

Susan Elkins remembers Antonelli as her favorite student. Before retiring in 2002, she taught thousands of students over a 25-year career.

“He is the one that stands out,” she said.

His ambition and drive were unlike any she had seen in a student. She came to realize that he was talented in math and science, his two favorite subjects.

After taking pre-calculus under Elkins his junior year, Antonelli stayed in her room and studied calculus on his own during his final year of high school. “At that time,” she said, “we didn’t have enough students to form a calculus class. He wanted to take calculus before he went to school. He scored high enough to get college credit for it. This is what I mean about the determination of this man.”

Ellis is not surprised by his accomplishments.

Antonelli is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School.

He has accumulated more than 3,200 hours in 41 kinds of aircraft, and he has completed 273 carrier landings, according to his NASA biography. He served as a fleet naval aviator and landing signal officer aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz during Operation Southern Watch, following the 1991 Gulf War and through the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

His honors include the Navy Commendation Medal and two Navy Achievement Medals.

As an astronaut, Antonelli works a high-risk vocation. On Feb. 1, 2003, seven astronauts were killed when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry over northeastern Texas.

Columbia was the second space shuttle NASA has lost. Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after launch in 1986.

But the agency appears to have rebounded from those tragic setbacks.

The shuttle is the first orbital spacecraft designed for partial reuse. The program, officially called Space Transportation System, started in the late 1960s and has dominated NASA’s manned operations since the mid 1970s.

In August, during the presidential campaign, Barack Obama vowed strong support for NASA at a town hall meeting near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The agency’s manifest includes about 10 more space shuttle missions. NASA hopes to replace the shuttle with smaller Orion capsules and huge, unmanned cargo boosters, known collectively as the Constellation program. The goal is to use Orion spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the space station while developing the heavy-lift Ares 5 rocket that will help NASA establish a base on the moon around 2020.

Despite the on-the-job risks, Pam Antonelli said she’s not worried about her son’s fast-approaching mission. “Do you know how many young men lost their lives in the war the last few years? How many people die in coal mines?” she said. “I’m very cool about it. Trust me, I’m not a cool person. I think Tony’s worked very hard and waited very long for this. I really believe in the space program. I’m really excited and proud.”