From Beaconsfield to Outer Space – Astronaut Had Local Ties

Peggy Whitson, one of the astronauts of the NASA Space Program, has ties to both Worth County and Mount Ayr. She grew up on a farm outside Beaconsfield, which is the smallest incorporated town in Iowa with 15 people; it is on the northeast corner of Ringgold County. Joyce Carr recalled that her folks were regular customers at Carr Motors in Allendale.

Whitson was a 1978 graduate of Mount Ayr and went on to get a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Chemistry at Iowa Wesleyan. She got her Doctorate at Rice University in 1985 and subsequently did post-doctoral work.

In 2007, Whitson and fellow astronaut Pam Melroy became the first two women to be mission commanders in orbit at the same time when they flew on STS-120. Whitson holds the record number of spacewalks by a woman, with a total combined time of 60 hours, 21 minutes. She was the oldest woman ever in space at 57 years, became the first woman to command the International Space Station twice, and broke the record for any astronaut in space, now at 665 days. She retired from NASA on June 15th, 2018.

Mount Ayr has honored her at their school. Perhaps another astronaut will come from this area; Northeast Nodaway is resurrecting its NASA program this year as the country seeks to return to the moon and place a human on Mars.