Michael Coats
- STS -41 -D ( 1984)
- STS -29 ( 1989)
- STS -39 (1991)
Michael Lloyd Coats ( born January 16, 1946 in Sacramento, California, USA ) is a former American astronaut and was between December 2005 and December 2012 Director of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center of NASA.
Training
Coats received a bachelor's degree in 1968 from the United States Naval Academy, in 1977 a Masters in Administration of Science and Technology from the George Washington University in 1979 and a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School.
Military career
1969 Coats was Naval Aviator. From August 1970 to September 1972 he was stationed as an A- 7E pilot on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk and flew 315 combat missions over Vietnam during this time. From September 1972 he worked as a pilot instructor in California before he began his training as a test pilot in December 1973. Prior to his application at NASA, he worked as a test pilot and pilot instructor.
Astronauts activity
In January 1978, Coats was selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate. He was a member of the support team for the Space Shuttle mission STS -4 and speaker connection ( CAPCOM ) for the missions STS -4 and STS- fifth From May 1989 to March 1990 he was Acting Chief of the Astronaut Office.
STS -41 -D
Coats was the pilot of Space Shuttle Discovery on its maiden flight on 30 August 1984. Besides the commander he and the other four crew members were all Space newbies. During the six- day mission, the three satellites SBS -D, SYNCOM IV -2 were (also known as LEASAT 2) exposed and Telstar 3 -C. In addition, the solar cell 1 ODST experiment and the experiment CFES - III were performed to investigate the crystal growth. In addition, recordings with an accompanying IMAX camera has been made. With the robotic arm of the shuttles had to be removed from the orbiter during the mission dangerous sheets of ice.
STS 61- H
In February 1985, Coats was assigned as commander of mission STS -61 -H. The Columbia mission, planned for June 1986 was canceled after the Challenger disaster. It should have been exposed to a commercial communications satellite. The team would have consisted of Michael Coats, John Blaha, Anna Fisher, James Buchli, Robert Springer, the British payload specialist Nigel Wood and the Indonesian payload specialist Pratiwi Sudarmono.
STS -29
On March 13, 1989 Coats flew as commander of the space shuttle Discovery into space. In addition to performing a variety of experiments, the communications satellite TDRS -4 was exposed in this mission. In addition, the astronauts took pictures with a hand-held IMAX camera.
STS -39
On April 28, 1991 Coats started again as commander of the space shuttle Discovery into space. STS -39 was the first non-secret shuttle mission of the U.S. Department of Defense. For this mission, only the MPEC experiment was classified as secret. Furthermore, were studied southern auroras, conducted various experiments and exposed several small satellites.
According to the NASA
Coats retired in 1991 from NASA and worked as vice president of aviation and communications for Loral Space Information Systems. From 1996 to 1998 he was vice-president of the civil space program for Lockheed Martin. After that, he was until 2005 Vice President for the Advanced Space Transportation for Lockheed Martin.
Return to NASA
From November 2005 to December 2012 Coats was the tenth Director of the Johnson Space Center.
Private
Michael Coats is married and has two children.