John Casper
- STS -36 (1990 )
- STS -54 (1993)
- STS -62 (1994)
- STS -77 (1996)
John Howard Casper ( born July 9, 1943 in Greenville in the U.S. state of South Carolina ) is a former American astronaut.
Casper received in 1966 a Bachelor in Engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1967 and a master's in aerospace engineering from Purdue University. He is a 1986 graduate of the Air War College.
Casper in 1968 was in the Air Force and was sent to his training as a pilot in the Vietnam War, where he flew 229 combat missions. From 1970 to 1974 he was stationed in the UK. After his return to the United States Casper was trained as a test pilot and used as such until 1980. After that, he was employed in the Ministry of Defense of the United States as deputy director of the Office of Special Projects.
Astronauts activity
In May 1984, Casper was selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate. After training as a shuttle pilot, he was employed in the Astronaut Office as Head of the Operations Development Branch. He led the development of the steering, braking and tire of the nose wheel and the development of a landing parachute. He was astronaut team manager for the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory ( SAIL) and speaker connection ( CAPCOM ) in the control center.
After his last space flight in 1996, Casper was employed as director of safety and quality assurance at the Johnson Space Center.
After the Columbia disaster in 2003, he was a member of the investigation team and also worked with the return-to -flight program for the resumption of shuttle flights.
STS -36
Casper was launched on 28 February 1990 as a pilot of the space shuttle Atlantis for the first time into space. It was a secret satellite of the U.S. Air Force suspended in a low orbit, from where this digital reconnaissance satellite should monitor most of the earth's surface.
STS -54
With the Space Shuttle Endeavour Casper began as a commander on 13 January 1993 on mission STS - 54th Main objectives of this mission were exposing the $ 200 million -dollar Tracking and Data Relay Satellite ( TDRS -F) and attempts to X-ray astronomy with the Diffuse X -ray Spectrometer ( DXS ).
STS -62
On 4 March 1994 Casper flew as commander of the space shuttle Columbia into space. Main payloads of the two -week mission were USMP -2 ( United States Microgravity Payload) and ODST -2 (Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology). During the flight, several experiments were carried out from different disciplines.
STS -77
The STS -77 mission, launched on the Space Shuttle Endeavour on 19 May 1996 and was the fifth mission of the commercial Spacehab module. Therein, a dozen experiments in the fields of biology, electrical engineering and agriculture were carried out. Furthermore, the platform SPARTAN was exposed, which in turn was called the Inflatable Antenna Experiment ( IAE). This 14 million dollar IAE was an aluminum- coated plastic shell that by nitrogen gas in its actual form - was brought - a dish antenna. The ten-day company was the first flight, the (Consolidated Control Center CCC) was led from the start until the landing of the new control center in Houston.
Private
John Casper and his wife, Beth, have four children.