Donald E. Williams

  • STS -51 -D ( 1984)
  • STS -34 ( 1989)

Donald Edward Williams ( born February 13, 1942 in Lafayette, Indiana, United States) is a former American astronaut.

Williams received a bachelor's degree in 1964 in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University.

Williams graduated in 1966 from the formation of the United States Navy to naval aviation. He was stationed aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and flew a total of 330 combat missions in the Vietnam War. In 1973 he attended the Armed Forces Staff College and 1974, the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. Until 1977 he worked as a test pilot.

Astronauts activity

In January 1978, Williams was selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate. After training as a shuttle pilot, he was employed at various points both at the Kennedy Space Center as well as at the Johnson Space Center (JSC ). As of July 1985, he was Deputy Head of Aircraft Operations at JSC and from September 1986 to December 1988 he was Head of Mission Support in the astronaut office.

STS -41 -F

STS -41 -F was scheduled for August 1984 with the discovery. This would have been the first flight of Discovery, if it had not been canceled due to delays in payload. As the occupying Karol Bobko, Donald Williams, Rhea Seddon, David Griggs and Jeffrey Hoffman were provided. The flight was STS -51 -E.

STS -51- E

This flight of the Challenger was canceled due to problems of the IUS upper stage. It should have been exposed to a TDRS satellite. As the occupying Karol Bobko, Donald Williams, Rhea Seddon, David Griggs, Jeffrey Hoffman, the French payload specialist Patrick Baudry and politicians Jake Garn were provided.

STS -51- D

On April 12, 1985 Williams began as a pilot of the space shuttle Discovery for the first time into space. Payload were the two satellites TELESAT -9 and LEASAT - third In the latter, however, the automatic startup of the antenna and the engine did not work. Despite a space exit by the astronauts Jeffrey Hoffman and David Griggs, this defect could not be corrected.

STS -34

On October 18, 1989 Williams started as commander of the space shuttle Atlantis into space. The main payload was the Jupiter probe Galileo. She was abandoned along with the rocket upper stage Inertial Upper Stage ( IUS ) in space. Further experiments on the Earth exploration, environmental research, materials technology, astronomy and medicine were carried out and it was an IMAX camera on board.

According to the NASA

In March 1990, Williams retired from the Navy and NASA and was Division Manager at Science Applications International Corporation. He is currently a Program Mananger for the National Data Buoy Center Technical Services Contract at Stennis Space Center.

Private

Donald Williams is married and has two children.

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