By BRYNN MANDEL/Republican-American/November 10, 2013

WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) His Twitter handle is AstroRM. He has amassed more than 11,000 followers on that social networking site.

On another website devoted to the hobby of geocaching a high-tech scavenger hunt with GPS devices hundreds more follow astronaut Rick Mastracchios exploits.

His Facebook page is flooded with likes about his travels, which last week brought him to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. From there, more than 1,150 events are planned around his Wednesday launch into space.

Fans from Tel Aviv to Waterburys own Buffalo Wild Wings will watch the start of the Brass City natives latest, and most intense, mission.

Since learning back in 2010 that he would travel on his fourth and longest space mission, Mastracchio has aimed to engage as many people as possible during the six-month assignment. Late Wednesday, he will rocket into space aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule as part of an international, three-man team, replacing a trio now living aboard the orbiting space station.

When I was in high school, I never even knew you could be an astronaut, chuckled Mastracchio, a Crosby High graduate who spent nine years trying before being accepted into NASAs rigorous astronaut program. In Waterbury, in Connecticut, its so far away. NASA is so far away. People know very little.

With the U.S. human space flight program halted with the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011, Mastracchio worried American efforts to explore science and space would be out-of-sight, and therefore out-of-mind.

Its a little disturbing for me and us at NASA, he said during a summer trip home to Houston, where he lives with his wife and high school sweetheart, Candi.

Mastracchio fretted that the past few years have been a low point for NASA because we dont have a launch vehicle. He expects that to change with the new generation of spacecraft being developed by NASA and private companies who are encouraging commercial investment in space. Mastracchio is one of about 45 NASA astronauts remaining, down from about 130. Until the next American fleet is functional, the Russian Soyuz represents the only way crews can be ferried to the space station.

Read more:

Waterbury native prepares for Soyuz space flight