Jim Buchli, NASA astronaut, first North Dakotan in space, honored with Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider award – Grand Forks Herald | Space

GRAND FORKS – A NASA astronaut and the first North Dakotan in space received the state’s highest civilian honor at a Tuesday press event at UND.

Jim Buchli has “literally gone further and flown higher than any North Dakotan in history,” said Gov. Doug Burgum as he awarded Buchli the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award.

The Rough Rider award, first presented in 1961, honors North Dakotans who have received national recognition for their achievements, and have included authors, businessmen and Secret Service agents.

A portrait of Buchli, the award’s 49th recipient, will hang beside other Rough Riders in the State Capitol.

Local and state elected officials, UND administrators and faculty and Buchli’s family and friends were on hand to honor him at Robin Hall, home of the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences.

Buchli, a New Rockford, North Dakota native, graduated from the Naval Academy in 1967 and served a tour in Vietnam as a Marine infantry officer before enrolling in naval flight officer training.

In 1978, he was selected as one of the 35 members of Astronaut Group 8, the first new crop since the Apollo program more than a decade before.

He went on to fly four Space Shuttle missions between 1985 and 1991, including the penultimate flight of the Challenger shuttle. He was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2019.

Buchli…