It isn’t everyday that you get a request from an alumnus asking for a piece of club sport gear they can take into space. However, Woody Hoburg reached out to his old Alpine Ski team asking for a patch that he might be able to carry with him off planet! Now known as astronaut Woody Hoburg, he is a member of the Artemis Team, a select group of astronauts charged with focusing on the development and training efforts for early Artemis missions.
Warren “Woody” Hoburg was selected by NASA to join the 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class. He reported for duty in August 2017 and completed two years of training as an Astronaut Candidate.
At the time of his selection in June 2017, Hoburg was an assistant professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, where he taught undergraduate courses on Dynamics and Flight Vehicle Engineering. Hoburg’s research focused on efficient methods for design of engineering systems. His group produced and maintains the open-source software tool GPkit, which is a Python package for geometric programming. His group’s tools were used to design a five-day endurance UAV currently under development for the US Air Force.
When asked for a quote about his time on MIT Alpine Ski team Woody had this to say…
“MIT alpine ski team was a core part of my undergraduate experience at MIT. In fact, I made my decision to enroll at MIT over other schools mostly because I heard at an info session that MIT has a ski team. At the time, skiing was still a varsity sport. We trained hard, often skiing all day, then running and doing situps/pushups before cooking dinner together in the A-frame cabin in Rumney, NH. Our head coach Todd Dumond instilled a work ethic that remains with me today. And living together as a team 24/7 for all of IAP was awesome. We bonded as a team, and learned how to be effective teammates. Go MIT skiing!”