If Tom Cruise became an NASA astronaut like he desperately wanted to, he'd have died 13 years ago in a grisly fireball.

The Hollywood A-lister can thank his lucky stars he didn't suit up for a trip to the International Space Station in 2003 aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia.

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That ill-starred shuttle disintegrated on re-entry on February 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts. There's a chance Cruise would have been one of those astronauts.

The story of how Cruise got lucky and cheated death hasn't been told before. But it's now come to light and it's a fascinating tale of what hadn't been. It sounds like the plot to a Hollywood movie but it deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Cruise seems to have made a deal with NASA back then. In exchange for going into space, Cruise voiced a 3D Imax film, "Space Station," in 2002 for NASA and helped enhance their website.

Former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, who headed NASA from 2001 to 2004, said it was Cruise who encouraged him to redesign NASA's website. According to O'Keefe, Cruise came in and visited NASA one day. 

Cruise, who was decribed by O'Keefe as "a big space nut," said NASA's "got this great website with tons of information on it and it's perfectly designed for a lot of research faculty across the globe, I guess, that is going to be of interest to them. But to the rest of us it's three clicks to oblivion and you go the next thing and you find yourself nowhere."

Sources say Cruise received "secret" astronaut training from NASA. Flying in space wouldn't have been scary for Cruise who's a qualified pilot that flies his own GulfStream IV Jet.

As part of that training, Cruise received an induction course from NASA in Florida and was taught how to replicate walking in a space suit by wading in a water tank.

"He was very enthusiastic about doing Space Station 3D but the deal was he also wanted to fly in the Space Shuttle," said Toni Myers, director of Space Station.

It isn't known why exactly he never made it onto Columbia but nobody, especially Cruise, regrets that.

TagsTom Cruise, astronaut, NASA