Astronaut Daniel M. Tani's 90-year-old mother died in an auto accident this week, but he has no way of getting home until late January. He must grieve from more than 200 miles away — in orbit, aboard the international space station.
It's a heartbreaking situation no other American astronaut has experienced. And it's made all the more tragic by Tani's devotion to his mother, Rose, who raised him and his siblings alone in suburban Chicago after their father died when he was 4. Tani's wife and a flight surgeon on the ground broke the news in a video conference call with the 46-year-old astronaut. But phone calls and e-mails from space are as close as Tani can get to the loving embrace of his family.
Tani has been on the space station since late October and had been scheduled to return to Earth as early as Monday of this week aboard space shuttle Atlantis, but fuel gauge problems delayed the Dec. 6 launch until January.
Tani's mother was struck and killed by a train in Lombard, Ill., on Wednesday. Police said she was stopped behind a school bus at a railroad crossing and decided to drive around the vehicle and the lowered gate. Link
It's a heartbreaking situation no other American astronaut has experienced. And it's made all the more tragic by Tani's devotion to his mother, Rose, who raised him and his siblings alone in suburban Chicago after their father died when he was 4. Tani's wife and a flight surgeon on the ground broke the news in a video conference call with the 46-year-old astronaut. But phone calls and e-mails from space are as close as Tani can get to the loving embrace of his family.
Tani has been on the space station since late October and had been scheduled to return to Earth as early as Monday of this week aboard space shuttle Atlantis, but fuel gauge problems delayed the Dec. 6 launch until January.
Tani's mother was struck and killed by a train in Lombard, Ill., on Wednesday. Police said she was stopped behind a school bus at a railroad crossing and decided to drive around the vehicle and the lowered gate. Link
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