How roots in Mt. Juliet helped shape a NASA astronaut

MT. JULIET, Tenn. (WKRN) — Retired NASA astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore credits his upbringing in Mt. Juliet for helping to shape his decades-long career of service.

“I was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Mom and Dad just happened to be there visiting my aunt, I’m told, and to the hospital they went. Eventually, I actually lived near Antioch. I went to Una Elementary School the first two years, first and second grade,” Wilmore explained. “And we were — my brother and I — were rambunctious. We were kind of in a subdivision, and Mom and Dad said, ‘We need to get some property,’ so we moved to the Mt. Juliet area.”

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He played football at Mt. Juliet Junior High School and Mt. Juliet High School.

“Coach Sims, my position coach, would say, ‘You gotta want it. You gotta want it,’ and that just instills a kind of a work ethic in a young man that you do gotta want it. And that little phrase has really stuck with me throughout my life.”

Wilmore recently released a book: “Stuck In Space: An Astronaut’s Hope Through the Unexpected.” It chronicles his journey as commander of Boeing’s Starliner.

“The memory that’s pretty solid in my mind is on Starliner when we’re approaching the space station when we had our thruster failures. There are eight thrusters that fire in the aft pointing direction. They’re located orthogonal. There’s a group on top, a group on the bottom, a group on the starboard side, a group on the port side. Seven at each location, but two of those at each location point aft, so there’s eight total that point aft,” Wilmore explained. “During the course of the rendezvous, we lost five of those eight aft pointing thrusters. The computer, they weren’t performing up to snuff, and the computer pulls them out. We lost the ability to fully control the spacecraft, fully in attitude and in translation. It was very, very degraded. I was manual control throughout that period, trying to maintain control of the spacecraft so we could get to a point where we could dock. That’s pretty vivid in my memory.”

His mission was intended to last 10 days, but instead, it kept him in space for nearly 10 months.

“This is something the Lord providentially showed me: In those types of extremist situations, fear can be very, very detrimental,” Wilmore said. “It was focus. Here’s the task. We have to do this. We have to dock the space station.”

Wilmore is a seventh-generation Tennessean who takes state pride to new heights, supporting his alma maters whenever possible.

“I went to Tennessee Tech — a state university. Got a master’s degree from Tennessee Tech and University of Tennessee. So seventh-generation Tennessean and just proud of my roots, proud that I can call myself a Tennessean because it provided that foundation that life built on from thereafter.”

News 2 sat down with Wilmore for a special 30-minute report streaming on WKRN+. In it, he shared how his book started as stories for his two daughters as he and his wife wanted to share how their faith had been shaping their parents lives long before they were born.

“My parents of course the mainstay took me to church and instilled those really important truths from God’s word and into me that again has been the foundation going forward,” Wilmore said.

NASA’S Artemis II astronauts returned to earth from their lunar mission on April 10, 2026 with a splashdown Captain Wilmore knew all too well.

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“Watching the splashdown, I know the sequence … This parachute technology is much more advanced than what you realize. Just watching it all and seeing it reef up and reef up, and when it finally got a full canopy on all three of those parachutes, I’m like, ‘Yes!’” Wilmore said. “All this technology — the Lord’s given us all this understanding. That’s why He’s glorified in it all. To be able to hit the bullseye from a burn you did eight days prior, I mean, it’s pretty spectacular.”

To learn more about Wilmore, you can watch “Butch Wilmore: How a Tennessee astronaut found hope ‘Stuck in Space’” any time on WKRN News 2’s free connected TV app: WKRN+.

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