Follow the tweets of Dr. Robert Satcher, or, ‘Astro_Bones’, a UF-trained orthopaedic oncologist, as he soars hundreds of miles above Earth onboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Satcher is a mission specialist on the shuttle which lifted off from Kennedy Space Center Nov. 16.

Satcher completed a fellowship in musculoskeletal oncology in 2001 under Dr. Mark Scarborough, professor and division chief of orthopaedic oncology at the College of Medicine. It is the second time a physician with ties to the University of Florida has flown onboard the Space Shuttle. Dr. William Fisher, a 1975 COM graduate, was a mission specialist for the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1985.

Satcher invited former mentors and colleagues to the Space Coast for a reception held the night before the launch and to watch the lift-off from VIP seating. Scarborough; his wife Dr. Kayser Enneking, chair of the department of anesthesiology; his father-in-law Dr. Bill Enneking, distinguished service professor and founding chairman of orthopaedic surgery at UF; his mother-in-law Margaret Enneking and his son Andrew Scarborough, were there to see the spectacular launch.

“It was awe-inspiring,” Kayser Enneking said.

Satcher, originally from South Carolina, received a bachelor’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986; a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from MIT in 1993 and a medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1994. He completed an internship and residency in orthopaedic surgery at University of California, San Francisco in 2000; and postdoctoral research fellowships at MIT in 1994 and University of California, Berkeley in 1998 before coming to UF for a year to train in orthopaedic oncology.

Photos below are courtesy of NASA.