ASTRONAUT BRESNIK WILL BECOME FATHER IN OUTER SPACE

When the Space Shuttle Atlantis docks at the International Space Station Wednesday morning, the crew will be bringing with it an indelible symbol of South Carolina’s military school.

That’s because U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Randy Bresnik, who is one of six members of the STS-129 mission, is carrying a replica of The Citadel’s “Big Red” spirit flag.

Bresnik graduated from The Citadel in 1989 and said his time at the school helped prepare him for a mission to outer space.

“To this date it was the hardest mental and physical challenge that I’ve come up against,” he told WCIV last week. “I didn’t know I could do it. After The Citadel I knew that I could do anything. The only limits you have are those that you place on yourself.”

Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday. The shuttle is set to reach the space station at 11:53 a.m. Wednesday.

But the flag isn’t the only bit of excitement Bresnik expects while in space. His wife Rebecca is due to give birth to the a daughter during the mission.

“I will admit the first day we found out there would be a conflict, I was like, ‘Why can’t you change your mission?’” Rebecca Bresnik told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

But with Randy Bresnik having trained for years for this mission, that was not a possibility. And with the space shuttle program ending in September 2010, Bresnik would not have been able to make it aboard one of the five other remaining crews.

During the 11 day Atlantis mission, the crew will be delivering some much-needed spare parts to the space station to the 11-year-old Low Earth Orbit research facility.