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Astronaut John Grunsfeld, National Geographic Adventure
"Around NASA, he's known as "the Hubble Repairman." And last May, on his third visit to the orbiting space telescope, John Grunsfeld pulled off the repair to end all repairs. Working at zero gravity some 350 miles above the surface of the Earth, the astronaut restored sight to a half-blind Hubble--called the greatest scientific instrument ever invented--and ensured that it will continue to send back the stunning images and mind-boggling data that have transformed our understanding of the universe."
John Grunsfeld is only an acquaintance, but he's one of my favorite people. Mainly that's because even with all the awesome things he's done, he's very low key and self-effacing, like an average working astronomer. I am sure he'd be the first to mention the _utterly essential_ contributions of others. He would say he had the honor of performing a lot of work on one of the most important science instruments in history, but that his hand was only covering the last millimeter of a very long process.
That's why I'm frustrated by stories like this which, by omitting mention of even some of the others, seem to imply that he was by himself up there. Grunsfeld was one of two spacewalkers for three of five spacewalks, and was supported closely by another 3 people on board, especially Megan the manipulator-arm specialist, and by an army of engineers on the ground.
Definitely vote for John. I'd like to vote for the STS-125 crew or all of the HST repair team as one. But I'd also like to vote for four more of the National Geographic nominees whose work I admire.
No, I don't work anywhere near the astronaut corps. I'm just a guy who's lucky to have talked with John several times.