Kansas-born astronaut Nick Hague to speak in Hutchinson

On Tuesday morning, April 5, Nick Hague, a Kansas-born astronaut, will speak at the Dillon Lecture Series' second lecture for 2022 at the Hutchinson Sports Arena.

The Dillon Lecture Series Committee invited Hague as the series' 162 speaker. He is the fifth astronaut to speak at the series. Other astronauts include Wally Schirra and Scott Kelly, but Hague is the first astronaut from Kansas to speak.

The Dillon Lecture Series coordinator, Robin Woodworth, said the committee invited Hague for the 2019 lectures but had to reschedule to 2022 due to COVID-19 quarantine restrictions.

"At the time that Nick was considered, he was working at the space station, and we knew he would come back in the fall of 2018," Woodworth said. "We are excited to have him with us now."

After the lecture series, Hague will visit the Cosmosphere, where Plum Creek Elementary second-grade students and McCandless Elementary sixth-grade students will share results from classroom experiments.

"We hope to allow them to experience someone they normally would not experience," Woodworth said. "It sounds like he was very proactive in reaching his goal, and I hope he inspires others to do so too."

About Nick Hague

Hague, born in Bellville, Kansas, attended the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1998, earning a bachelor's degree in astronautical engineering.

He then received a master's degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000.

In 2015, Hague finished astronaut candidate training, and in 2018, NASA selected him for an International Space Station expedition that launched on Oct. 11, 2018.

He later acted as a flight engineer on the space station in 2019 for Expeditions 59 and 60.