Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Irvine’s very own astronaut, has become an internet sensation after she sang the national anthem at this year’s NCAA men’s basketball national championship game.
Caldwell Dyson was studying atmospheric chemistry at UC Irvine in 1997 when she got a call from NASA informing her that she was among the 25 out of 5,000 applicants selected that year to join the Astronaut Corps.
Caldwell Dyson, 53, is now a veteran of two spaceflights and has logged more than 188 days in space, including 22 hours in spacewalks.
A clip of Caldwell Dyson’s performance at the March Madness title game between University of Connecticut and San Diego State went viral on Twitter. The game itself drew nearly 15 million viewers on CBS.
