Curtis Roundtree is a former NASA astronaut and current flight director for the Wanderer mission.
Background and career information[]
Roundtree was born in Lake City, South Carolina, the youngest in a family of six. His eldest brother Dannie played the trombone for a marching band at the funeral for local astronaut Ronald E. McNair who was killed in the Challenger disaster.
Roundtree decided to join the Marines in his sophomore year of High School in 1995. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy and graduated at the rank of Second Lieutenant in 2001.
He served in the Naziristan War in 2003 and as a fighter pilot for much of the conflict until it's end in 2011. After the war, Roundtree retired from the Marine Corps and joined NASA. He was a member of NASA Astronaut Group 22 in 2017.
He went to space four times during his career: his first time was an ISS crew rotation in 2020, another time was a Neil A. Armstrong lunar outpost construction mission in 2022. And two more missions to the ISS and Moon in 2024 and 2026. He retired from NASA in 2028 and was scouted by Vega Aerospace and became the first Administrator of WSC in 2031 before becoming the flight director for the Wanderer in 2036.