LANCASTER. Calif. — It’s hard not to believe in the power of dreams seeing a family photo of a kid in an Easter bunny costume altered to be an astronaut flight suit, holding a Snoopy plush toy standing in for Buzz Aldrin.

“I dreamed of being an astronaut,” NASA veteran Mike Massimino told a captivated audience of hundreds at the Antelope Valley EDGE business conference. “I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

During his 1970s childhood on Long Island, N.Y., his mom worked seamstress magic to transform the bunny costume into a flight suit, and the cute kid photo shows Massimino clutching Snoopy. The idea was that Mike was Neil Armstrong, and Snoopy was the second man on the moon.

At age 61, Massimino never tires of sharing his experiences in space, and the road he traveled to realize that dream of becoming an astronaut. Trained as a civilian engineer and researcher working on NASA projects, he applied to be an astronaut, and was turned down.

He was turned down a second time and turned down a third time. And NASA informed him the last time that he had an eyesight condition that would exclude him from the astronaut program.

Massimino enrolled himself in a brain training program to improve his eyesight.

“They told me, ‘This is really a program for children, for people young enough that their eyes are still developing.’”

Never give up on the power of dreams — dreams propelled by passion. After completing the brain-eye training program, he was deemed to have visual acuity adequate for space flight.

“I was accepted into the 1996 astronaut training program,” he said.

That’s the kind of life story that is followed by applause. But there was more.

From all the engineering research and design he had participated in, earning a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, teaching at Georgia Tech, he seemed to be heading toward a destiny.

Eventually, he would secure the record for longest duration spacewalks outside the space shuttle while orbiting the Earth. He sorted into being the astronaut who would, with his partner, effect repairs on the Hubble Telescope.

But before that, after undergoing his training, and all the hurdles of being selected as mission specialist to board space shuttle Columbia, on the night before launch, he gazed up at the rockets with the fuel pulsing through them.

“It seemed like an angry beast. It seemed like it was alive,” he said.

And he suddenly wondered if “in all that time since he was a little boy that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.” And he mused over “maybe there was a way to get out of this.”

But that did not happen. Many things did happen.

For one thing, he got to meet his original hero, Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, in the NASA cafeteria. And he had to ask how Armstrong came up with that single sentence, “One small step for  man … one giant leap for mankind.”

And his hero told him, “This is a dangerous job … and you have so many things to take care of, you just can’t be thinking about all these other things.”

It was, a phrase, he came up with himself, having put his own mind to it.

When the time came for Massimino to communicate to a global audience he’s credited with sending the first “Tweet” from space on the messaging platform formerly known as Twitter, during STS 125 aboard Atlantis in 2009.

“Awesome launch,” was part of it, he said. And while not as memorable as the “One Small Step,” it still is in the history. And he heeded his hero’s advice, to keep his mind on the task at hand, but did manage to add in the tweet, “I am feeling great, working hard, and enjoying the magnificent views. The adventure of a lifetime begins.”

His first space flight, STS-109 Columbia, March 1-12, 2002, was the fourth Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. The crew of STS-109 successfully upgraded the Hubble Space Telescope, leaving it with a new power unit, a new camera, and new solar arrays.

STS-109 set a record for spacewalk time with 35 hours and 55 minutes during five spacewalks. Massimino performed two spacewalks totaling 14 hours and 46 minutes. STS-109 orbited the Earth 165 times and covered 4.5 million statute miles in over 262 hours and 10 minutes, according to his personal biography, Michael Massimino, NASA Astronaut.

Success in space flight, he said, amounts to “Three Trusts.”

“Trust your team,” he said. “Trust your gear. Trust your training.”

Also, “No matter how bad you mess up, you can always make it worse!” Advice from a mentor was to “allow yourself 30 seconds,” to rant, to blame yourself, and then, put it behind you, and return to problem solving.

For Massimino there has been plenty of fun on Earth in addition to hard core engineering, teaching, research, and authoring several books.

He also notched a recurring role as himself on the “Big Bang Theory,” helping young genius Howard Walowitz prepare for a space launch, and awarding him the nickname “Fruit Loops,” because of the character’s eating them for breakfast at home.

Responding to audience questions from the Antelope Valley business community, Massimino said he believes in the possibility of life beyond Earth.

“There’s no credible evidence that we have been visited,” he said. “But the universe is a big place. There are billions of galaxies out there. The chance that we are the only place where life exists is not plausible.”

Of his space walking perspective, he said, “This is a view from heaven. It is beyond words. It gives you a whole different way of looking at everything.”

And that plush Snoopy that subbed for Buzz Aldrin in his Easter bunny flight suit conversion photo? Snoopy flew with him aboard the space shuttle.