Piers Sellers

  • STS- 112 (2002)
  • STS- 121 (2006)
  • STS- 132 (2010)

Piers John Sellers ( born April 11, 1955 in Crowborough, East Sussex County, United Kingdom) is an American astronaut British origin. He is after Helen Sharman and Michael Foale, the third Briton in space.

Life

Sellers came to the south of Britain to the world, but mostly grew out of the home. His father John worked in the army, and so the family moved around. So he got to Europe, but also know the Middle East.

Before he could drive a car, he learned to fly. At the age of 15, he began with gliding. He made the private pilot's license two years later with the Royal Air Force. To fly jets irritated him though, but he renounced it because it would have meant to commit themselves for many years as a professional soldier. Piers had been forced for many years to ride a motorcycle because his father would not let him take the family car ( he made the driver's license until 22).

By 1973, Sellers attended the grammar school in Kent Cranbrook Primary ( the Cranbrook School, as her official name, was founded in 1518, Elizabeth I was there once taught ). He then studied at the Scottish University of Edinburgh, he graduated with a BA in Ecology 1976. In 1981 he received a doctorate in central England West Yorkshire at the University of Leeds ( Faculty of Biological Sciences ) in the subject Biometeorology.

Sellers is a renowned scientist, a respected expert on issues of climate change and global warming. He began rather early in his scientific career for the processes in the atmosphere to be interested, and how it can be calculated by means of computer modeling processes. NASA found out about it, and he was shortly after he had done his doctorate, an invitation to the U.S. to work in this field at the Goddard Space Flight Center ( GSFC ) in Maryland.

Sellers, who was working at the time as a software consultant in London, accepted the offer, and in 1982 he moved with his wife to the USA. With three suitcases and some money, they arrived in Greenbelt, and two days later, Sellers began his service. From then on, he conducted research at the Laboratory for Terrestrial Physics of the GSFC. Especially how the atmosphere and biosphere affect each other interests him ( e). The next 13 years he conducted research in the field of climate and global warming in order to understand computer models, satellite data and reconnaissance flights, the connections. However, he worked not only from the office. Again and again he undertook expeditions and worked with colleagues around the world. He examined, for example, in Brazil the impact that cutting down tropical rain forest on the weather. But his work also led him into the desert, specifically the Sahara. The most extensive project in which he had participated, was in Canada. In the north of the country was explored, as the climate on the uninhabited area effect.

Astronauts activity

Even as a little kid Sellers was passionate about space. He watched spellbound the flight of Yuri Gagarin one day after his sixth birthday and let explain everything from his father. The live images of the first moon landing in 1969 the enthusiastic teenager. Astronaut was for him first no career aspirations, but utopia, because Britain has no manned space program. With his move to the United States changed that soon he began to apply to be an astronaut at NASA. Every year he handed in Houston one of his documents. His biggest obstacle was the British nationality, and so he was finally naturalized in 1991.

Piers Sellers came with the 16th astronaut group to NASA, the largest group since the legendary " Thirty Five New Guys" 1978 ( group 8) was formed with a thickness of 35 candidates. Sellers was one of the total of 2,432 candidates who met the formal selection criteria. It emerged 123 finalists, the JSC in Houston visited between October 1995 and February 1996 in order to conduct interviews and to be medically examined. Mid- August 1996 began Sellers along with the 43 other candidates, the two-year basic training.

Piers Sellers was employed there after his basic training mission specialist, where he was able to bring his years of experience - in the computer department. In 1999 he came to the fledgling ISS Department. The next two and a half years, he worked with the Russian side on the computer program for the ISS. He constantly shuttled back and forth between Houston and Moscow until he started with the flight-specific training for his first deployment.

Sellers have been prepared for the first time for a shuttle flight in August 2001. STS -112 was conducted in October 2002 with the Atlantis and brought a $ 390 million expensive and 14 -ton lattice construction to the International Space Station (ISS). The so-called S1- boom was by Sellers and his colleague David Wolf at three spacewalks ( EVAs ) attached to the space station.

Only two months after its maiden flight Sellers was entrusted again with a flight. Along with James Halsell as Commander Alan Poindexter as a pilot, and Stephanie Wilson, Wendy Lawrence and Michael Foreman as a mission specialist, he should make up the crew of STS- 120. The supply flight to the ISS had been scheduled for February 2004, it should expand to the connection module Harmony the space station on. Because of the Columbia accident a year ago, had the flight planning of the shuttle program be changed and STS -120 was delayed for several years.

In July 2004, NASA undertook a small reconstruction when the crew of STS- 121. Carlos Noriega was taken for medical reasons from the flight and replaced by Sellers. The mission was carried out according to several shifts in July 2006. Main tasks were once prove that the angegangenen after STS- 107 and STS -114 Space Shuttle improvements to the work, and on the other to provide the ISS with goods as well as to reinforce their two -man crew by an astronaut. Thus, since the ISS Expedition 6 three astronauts back to work on the station. During the two-week flight Sellers and his colleague Fossum undertook three EVAs. They led repairs to the space station by, tested a system of two robot arms on their structural integrity and tested a new type of filler on their suitability for space.

To his third space flight departed Sellers on May 14, 2010 with the STS- 132. This was the penultimate flight of the space shuttle Atlantis. The landing took place on 26 May 2010.

Private

Sellers and his British wife known each other since college days and have two children.

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