Daniel Tani held up a greeting to his mother as he prepared to board the Space Shuttle Discovery in October.
(Reuters/NASA)
HOUSTON - 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.
"He is obviously pretty sad," the astronaut's brother, Richard Tani, said in yesterday's Chicago Sun-Times. "He was pretty close to her. We are all close to her. She was loved by everyone."
Tani's wife and a flight surgeon on the ground broke the news in a video-conference call with the 46-year-old astronaut.
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.
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft is docked at the space station but must be reserved in case the two Americans and one Russian aboard need to evacuate the outpost in an emergency.
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.
"It's a unique situation to be on orbit, without a ride home maybe, for a long time and something this tragic happens in your family," said the Rev. Rob Hatfield, a minister at the elderly woman's church.
NASA prepares for all sorts of contingencies, and bad news from home is one of them. All astronauts are asked whether they would want to know about family emergencies right away or whether that information should be held back if they are preparing for an intense task such as a spacewalk, said Dr. Sean Roden, Tani's flight surgeon.
Tani, like nearly all his colleagues, wanted to know immediately, Roden said. Many have said they wouldn't want their family to go through the grief alone, he added.
NASA offered to let Tani take some time off, but he decided to carry on with his normal duties, including checking on science experiments, Roden said.
The Tani family has not announced when the funeral will be held. NASA said it will help Daniel Tani participate in any way he can, perhaps by a video or telephone linkup.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
