For
more than 30 years, the Shelton family from Texas has shown their support for
NASA mission control by sending flowers. 

The Shelton family has a love for space that has been
passed over half a century. 

In the 1960s, Mark Shelton dreamed of astronauts from his
home in Fort Worth, Texas and, while he hasn’t yet become an astronaut, that
love for space has endured. But it was a tragedy that drove Mark Shelton’s
unique involvement in space.

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In 1988, as NASA prepared to launch its STS-26 mission,
Mark, his wife Terry and their daughter MacKenzie sent a bouquet of roses to
mission control to show their appreciation for the agency and its teams.

Shelton said, “I didn’t actually decide to do it
until the day the STS-26 mission was to land, and I didn’t know that I even
could get it done in time.” 

Shelton said that he called the information to find a florist
near the space center and then he asked the florist if they could deliver roses
to Mission Control. At first they refused but they agreed. He said he had no
idea if they actually send it or not.

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 Milt
Helfin, who was a shuttle flight director at the time made a personal call to
the Shelton family.

Heflin said in the same statement that it was very
simple, saying congratulations and wishing everyone the best on the mission.

The
family had no connection to America’s top space agency, they just happened to
be a fan of the space program. Mark Shelton had been a fan of space since he
visited the Johnson Space Center as a child in the 1960s.

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The Sheltons continued to send flowers to mission control
for every shuttle mission that followed STS-26 until the end of the program in
2011. Then in May of 2020, flowers returned to mission control when SpaceX
launched its test flight Demo-2: the first astronaut launch to lift off from
the U.S. since the shuttle program ended. 

Demo-2 marked the 111th
bouquet sent to mission control. 

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The family is continuing their rosy tradition, this time
with SpaceX sending astronauts from the US. Now when SpaceX’s Crew-3 mission is about to launch on Nov. 6, flowers will once again return to mission control.
This will make SpaceX’s upcoming Crew-3 launch bouquet number 114.