Born in Jersey, at home in the clouds, As an Edison youth, shuttle commander Mark Polansky

Star Ledger ^ | 12.10.06 | SULEMAN DIN

[Coleus]

When Mark Polansky reaches space, he'll have brought a little piece of Jersey with him. The astronaut is scheduled to lift off tonight from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard Space Shuttle Discovery. He is commanding the STS-116 mission to the International Space Station. But his journey began as a boy growing up by Roosevelt Park in North Edison, a pharmacist's son who devoured books on science, was glued to the television for all the early space launches and pretended a cardboard box was a spaceship.

"I loved geography. I loved the idea of exploring," Polansky said. "I figured the next horizon would be space." Polansky's mother, Edith, still lives in Edison, her home now a shrine to her son's extraordinary career. His high school teacher from the 10th grade, Catherine DiGoia, tells all her students about a 15-year-old who was determined to be in space. And his boyhood friends, like Brian Kelly from seventh-grade French class at Herbert Hoover Middle School, have followed his journey.

It's a close group that knew the stars had a place for Polansky to travel, and has assembled again at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to watch his flight blast off, praying for the best. "I can't even describe my pride," DiGoia said in a telephone interview yesterday from Florida. "We're a small community, and yet we have an astronaut amongst us."

This is Polansky's second space mission. In 2001, the astronaut piloted Space Shuttle Atlantis on flight STS-98, logging over 309 hours in space. Tonight's flight could be postponed. NASA downgraded launch chances to 40 percent due to weather.

"The forecast has trended for the worse right now," said Kathy Winters, shuttle weather officer. An expected cloud ceiling at 3,000 feet was the biggest obstacle for getting Discovery off

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