Capt. William Shepherd, USN (Ret.), graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1971 and served with U.S. Navy Special Warfare units in the Pacific and European theaters. In 1984, he was selected as a NASA astronaut and flew on three space shuttle flights carrying satellites and scientific payloads to space. In 2000, Capt. Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts launched from Kazakhstan on a Soyuz rocket, docked with the International Space Station, and started Expedition One’s 141-day mission in orbit. Capt. Shepherd retired from the space program in 2001 and is currently on staff as a senior researcher at Stevens Institute in Hoboken, N.J., where he lectures on applied system engineering and project management.