Rakesh Mogul remembers the day he knew he wanted to go into space. "I was in fourth grade, staring at a poster of an astronaut, and I thought, 'That's what I want to do.' " He never made it aboard the shuttle, but the Cal Poly Pomona chemistry professor found a challenging role in the rarefied air of space researcher and educator, scoring what College of Science Dean Donald O. Straney calls "a NASA trifecta."