William C. McCool
- STS- 107 (2003)
William Cameron " Willie" McCool ( born September 23, 1961 in San Diego, California, USA; † 1 February 2003 on the south of the United States ) was an American astronaut.
Career
As the child of members of the U.S. military McCool moved in his youth to often and lived among other things, in Urbana (Illinois), Duluth ( Minnesota) and two years on Guam, where he met his future wife. Thanks to its high intelligence and his great learning will he prepared the frequent changes of school no difficulties. From 1977 the family lived in Lubbock ( Texas), where Willie the Coronado High School visited and 1979 made the statements. He joined the U.S. Navy and studied at the United States Naval Academy in Maryland. He received his bachelor's degree in Applied Sciences in 1983 as the second best of his year - under 1083 graduates. It concurred with a computer science degree at the University of Maryland, which he finished after four semesters with a master.
McCool was trained in Texas for Navy pilots and puts 1986 on a unit to Whidbey Iceland (Washington). There he was trained on the EA-6B " Prowler ", a specially built for the electronic warfare aircraft.
After two Mediterranean deployments aboard the aircraft carrier "USS Coral Sea ", he participated in a training program for student test pilots in part, on which the Naval Postgraduate School ( NPS) in Monterey, California and the United States Naval Test Pilot School ( USNTPS ) at the U.S. east Coast involved. From the autumn of 1989 McCool studied aeronautical engineering at the NPS. He also graduated from the same time a test pilot seminar at the USNTPS, which is located in Maryland at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River. In the summer of 1992, the NPS awarded him a master and the USNTPS he received the test pilot certificate with distinction.
Then McCool remained on the Patuxent River base and worked at the Strike Aircraft Test Directorate as a test pilot for machines of the TA -4J " Skyhawk " and EA -6B. Later he returned to his old Station on Whidbey Iceland back and served with a " Prowler " squadron on the "USS Enterprise ". Overall, McCool was on a flying experience of over 2800 hours on 24 types of aircraft and more than 400 landings on aircraft carriers refer.
Astronauts activity
McCool was just with the aircraft carrier on a mission, when NASA chose him in 1996 for the 16th astronaut group. He was one of the total of 2432 candidates who met the formal selection criteria. It emerged 123 finalists who visited between October 1995 and February 1996, the Johnson Space Center in Houston (Texas ) to conduct interviews and to be medically examined. McCool had come already at the 15th astronaut group in the final round, but then not selected.
Basic training began in autumn 1996 and lasted two years. Originally, he was responsible for the IT support branch, then as a technical assistant to the director of flight crew operations. After McCool took over tasks in the area of the cockpit upgrades in an astronaut office, where he drew up proposals for improving the pilot consoles.
In the fall of 2000, he was assigned to his only spaceflight. Delays in the shuttle program meant that the STS-107 mission could not begin until mid-January 2003. After two weeks of scientific research is on board. In Spacehab module, the astronauts took before more than 80 experiments that were running around the clock. For this reason, the team worked in two- shift operation. McCool led the Blue team, which also includes Mission Specialists Brown and Anderson belonged. The remaining four crew members asked the Red Team. The space shuttle broke up while returning, just 16 minutes before the scheduled landing. All astronauts aboard the Columbia were killed.
McCool left his wife and three sons. The remains of his body were buried in the state of Washington. His grave stone is, however, on the " North Prairie " Cemetery in Washington County ( Illinois), where his great-grandparents and great-grandparents ( the 1850 emigrated from Unterlübbe in the USA) are buried.
Awards
Among other things, McCool won the following awards:
- Congressional Space Medal of Honor ( posthumously )
- NASA Space Flight Medal
- NASA Distinguished Service Medal
- Defense Distinguished Service Medal
In addition to the memory of William McCool were the asteroid ( 51829 ) Williemccool, a survey on Mars ( McCool Hill ), a small crater on the moon, a school in the village of Santa Rita Guam ( William C. McCool Elementary / Middle School ), an athletic field in high school in Lubbock ( Willie McCool track and Field ), where a larger than life statue of McCool was erected, and various other gyms and computer labs posthumously named in other schools after the astronauts.