Mark C. Lee
- STS -30 ( 1989)
- STS -47 (1992)
- STS -64 ( 1994)
- STS -82 (1997)
Mark Charles Lee ( born August 14, 1952 in Viroqua, Vernon County, Wisconsin ) is a former American astronaut.
Training
Lee received a Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from the United States Air Force Academy in 1980 and a master's in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1974.
Military career
After his pilot training at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas and one development for the F- 4 Phantom II on the Luke Air Force Base in Arizona Lee was stationed two and a half years on the Kadena Air Base on Okinawa. In 1980 he was transferred to the Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, where it was used in the AWACS program. In 1982 he moved to the Hill Air Force Base in Utah.
Astronauts activity
In May 1984, Lee was selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate. After training as a mission specialist, he was employed in the area for spacewalks, the IUS rocket stages, Spacelab and the International Space Station. Lee was also a speaker connection ( CAPCOM ) and inserted into the support teams at the Kennedy Space Center.
STS -M -61
This mission of the Challenger had in July 1986 a TDRS satellites are put into space. The crew would have consisted of Loren Shriver, Bryan O'Connor, Mark Lee, Sally Ride, William Fisher and the U.S. industry astronaut payload specialist Robert Wood. After the Challenger disaster of this flight was canceled.
STS -30
On May 4, 1989 Lee flew aboard the space shuttle Atlantis for the first time into space. Payload was the Venus probe Magellan, which was accelerated in the direction of Venus with an IUS upper stage. STS -30 was the first mission in which a space shuttle was used to launch an interplanetary spacecraft.
STS -47
On September 12, 1992 Lee started as a mission specialist aboard the space shuttle Endeavour to the tenth Spacelab mission. On board 43 experiments of various kinds were carried out, for example, it was tested whether hornets have the ability to build honeycombs under microgravity. The result was negative. Even in the medical field experiments were operated. For the first time flew with Mark Lee and Jan Davis, a married couple into space. Lee and Davis were married in secret. When this became known to NASA, it was already too late to incorporate replacement.
STS -64
His third flight took Lee in September 1994 as a mission specialist on the Space Shuttle Discovery. As part of STS- 64, the laser optical radar system LITE were tested. A further object was the launching and recovering of astronomical research satellites SPARTAN -201, a free- flying satellites to investigate the solar wind and the solar corona. After eleven days in space, he landed on 20 September 1994 at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
STS -82
With the space shuttle Discovery Lee flew on 11 February 1997 on the second maintenance mission for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Lee was involved in three of the five spacewalks (EVA), during which the telescope was repaired. In addition to a tape recorder, which was replaced with a core memory, the HST received the infrared camera and the spectroscope NICMOS STIS. For two spectrographs were expanded.
STS -98
Lee was scheduled for another shuttle flight to the ISS, but was taken in September 1999 for undisclosed reasons from the team and replaced by Robert Lee Curbeam.
According to the NASA
After retiring from NASA in July 2001 he joined the company Orbital Technologies to Wisconsin.
Private
Mark Lee is married his third wife and has two children. His second wife was the NASA astronaut January Davis.