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Astronaut Birthdays for March


GordonD

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March 1st

 

Donald K. "Deke" Slayton (1924) USA

Selected 1959 (NASA Group 1)

Dropped from flight status due to a heart 'murmur' - only member of the Original Seven not to fly in Mercury

Became Director of Flight Crew Operations

Reinstated 1972

Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, 15 - 24 July 1975 (9d 1h 28m)

Retired 1982

Died 12 June 1993

 

 

Michael Lampton (1941) USA

Selected 1978

Assigned to STS-61K/Spacelab EOM; mission cancelled following the Challenger accident

Mission renamed STS-45/ATLAS-1; assigned but dropped for medical reasons

Retired 1992; no flights

 

 

 

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March 2nd

 

Duane Graveline (1931) USA

Selected 1965 (NASA Group 4)

Resigned for 'personal reasons' two months later - it was eventually revealed that he was about to go through a messy divorce and wanted to avoid tainting NASA with a scandal

Helped develop the Lower Body Negative Pressure Device used on prolonged space missions to improve blood circulation to the legs

Died 5th September 2016

 

 

 

Fred Lewis (1949) USA

Selected 1985

Meteorologist; assigned to STS-61M but mission cancelled following the Challenger accident

Retired 1986; no flights

 

 

 

Mikhail Tyurin (1960) Russia

Selected 1994

STS-105/ISS Expedition 3, 10 August - 17 December 2001 (128d 20h 45m) - landed aboard STS-108

Soyuz TMA-9/ISS Expedition 14, 18 September 2006 - 21 April 2007 (215d 8h 22m)

Soyuz TMA-11M/ISS Expeditions 38/39, 7 November 2013 - 14 May 2014 (187d 21h 44m)

Still on active status; total flight time to date 532d 2h 51m

 

 

 

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Apologies for the late posting but today's is a biggie!

 

March 3rd

 

Neil Garland (1928) USA

Selected 1963 as Military Astronaut

Possibly would have flown on USAF's Manned Orbiting Laboratory but programme cancelled

Retiral date unknown; no flights

 

 

Vladimir Kovalyonok (1942) USSR

Selected 1967

Soyuz 25, 9 - 11 October 1977 (2d 0h 44m) - Soft-docked with Salyut 6 but unable to achieve a hard dock and airtight seal; mission abandoned

Soyuz 29/Salyut 6 Expedition 2, 15 June - 2 November 1978 (139d 14h 47m) - landed aboard Soyuz 31

Soyuz T-4/Salyut 6 Expedition 5, 12 March - 26 May 1981 (74d 17h 37m)

Total flight time 216d 9h 8m

Retired June 1984

 

 

James Adamson (1946) USA

Selected 1984 (NASA Group 10)

STS-28, 8 - 13 August 1989 (5d 1h 0m) - Classified DoD mission, deployed two military satellites. First flight of the human skull carried for medical research

STS-43, 2 - 11 August 1991 (8d 21h 21m) - Deployed TDRS-5 communications satellite

Total flight time 13d 22h 21m

Retired 1992

 

 

Bonnie Dunbar (1949) USA

Selected 1980 (NASA Group 9)

STS-61A, 30 October - 6 November 1985 (7d 0h 44m) - Spacelab D1 (German-financed mission)

STS-32, 9 - 20 January 1990 (10d 21h 0m) - LDEF retrieval flight

STS-50, 15 June - 9 July 1992 (13d 19h 30m) - United States Microgravity Laboratory 1

STS-71, 27 June - 7 July 1995 (9d 19h 22m) - First docking with Mir; crew exchange (Solovyov and Budarin up; Dezhurov and Thagard down)

STS-89, 23 - 31 January 1998 (8d 19h 47m) - Eighth docking with Mir; crew exchange (Thomas up, Wolf down)

Total flight time 50d 8h 23m

Retired 2005

 

 

James Voss (1949) USA

Selected 1987 (NASA Group 12)

STS-44, 24 November - 1 December 1991 (6d 22h 50m) - Unclassified DoD mission; deployed DSP satellite to detect nuclear detonations

STS-53, 2 - 9 December 1992 (7d 7h 19m) - Final DoD mission; deployed three satellites (one classified)

STS-69, 7 - 18 September 1995 (10d 20h 28m) - Research mission; carried various scientific packages including the SPARTAN 201 free-flying pallet on its third flight

STS-101, 19 - 29 May 2000 (9d 20h 9m) - Third ISS assembly flight; replaced batteries aboard the Zarya core module and delivered other supplies

STS-102/ISS Expedition 2, 8 March - 22 August 2001 - landed aboard STS-105

Total flight time 202d 5h 26m

Retired June 2003

 

 

Sergei Yemelyanov (1951) USSR

Selected 1984

Retired for medical reasons June 1992; no flights

Died of a heart attack 5 December 1992

 

 

Aleksandr Borodin (1953) USSR

Selected 1978

Retired 1993; no flights

 

 

 

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30 minutes ago, Eric Mc said:

I wonder was Borodin good at music?

If he wasn't, I hope he knew he wasn't. Can you imagine a six month mission with somebody who plays a musical instrument badly ?

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March 4th

 

Yuri Senkevich (1937) USSR

Selected 1965; trained for a Voskhod mission but programme cancelled

Retired 1966; no flights

Participated in Thor Heyerdahl's Ra Expeditions, 1969 and 1970

Participated in the 12th Soviet Antarctic Expedition

Hosted the Travellers' Club show on Soviet television for 30 years, visiting more than 200 countries; holds the Guinness record for the longest-serving TV anchorman

Died 25 September 2003

 

 

Yuri Lonchakov (1965) Russia

Selected 1997

STS-100, 19 April - 21 May 2001 (11d 21h 30m)

Soyuz TMA-1/ISS Taxi Flight 4, 30 October - 10 November 2002 (10d 20h 53m) - landed aboard Soyuz TM-34

Soyuz TMA-13/ISS Expedition 18, 12 October 2008 - 8 April 2009 (178d 0h 13m)

Total flight time 200d 18h 36m

Retired September 2013

 

 

 

Information from Spacefacts website and Wikipedia

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March 5th

 

Philip Chapman (1935) USA

Selected 1967 (NASA Group 6)

Retired July 1972; no flights

 

 

Valeri Korzun (1953) USSR

Selected 1987

Soyuz TM-24/Mir Expedition 22, 17 August 1996 - 2 March 1997 (196d 17h 26m)

STS-111/ISS Expedition 5, 5 June - 7 December 2002 (184d 22h 14m) - landed aboard STS-113

Total flight time 381d 15h 40m

Retired September 2003

 

 

Robert Curbeam (1962) USA

Selected 1994 (NASA Group 15)

STS-85, 7 - 19 August 1997 (11d 20h 26m) - Carried CRISTA-SPAS-2 pallet (Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometers & Telescopes for Atmosphere-Shuttle Pallet Satellite)

STS-98, 7 - 20 February 2001 (12d 21h 20m) - Delivered Destiny module to the ISS

STS-116, 10 - 22 December 2006 (12d 20h 44m) - Delivered P5 truss segment to the ISS; also crew exchange (Williams up, Reiter down)

Total flight time 37d 14h 30m

Retired December 2007

 

 

 

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It's interesting that most Shuttle era astronauts didn't really want to exceed more than 4 missions on the Shuttle. I wonder did they feel that they would be pushing their luck if they did more? 

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2 hours ago, Eric Mc said:

It's interesting that most Shuttle era astronauts didn't really want to exceed more than 4 missions on the Shuttle. I wonder did they feel that they would be pushing their luck if they did more? 

Possibly down to a relative lack of opportunities to fly. When the Shuttle was first designed plans were for flights every couple of weeks and for that you need a lot of astronauts. In practice of course they never got anywhere remotely near that figure because of the amount of maintenance that was required between missions. Without checking I think the most flights in a single year was eight. So with so many astronauts competing for so few flights the chances were they'd have to wait years between them, everything else being equal, so many probably decided to move on. Of course there was more to being an astronaut than flying - lots of ground-based jobs that might not be so glamorous but still connected to the space programme. I've no doubt that in some cases the 'pushing their luck' thing may have been a factor, especially if pressured by family. But these guys had balls of steel (including the women!) so they were prepared to take the risk.

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I think it's one of those things where you are scared witless each time you lift off - but can't resist the urge to do it again. Eventually the reality of the likelihood of dying just gets too much.

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March 6th

 

Gordon Cooper (1927) USA

Selected 1959 (NASA Group 1)

Mercury-Atlas 9 (Faith 7) 15 - 16 May 1963 (1d 10h 19m) - Final Mercury mission, only one to exceed one day

Gemini 5, 21 - 29 August 1965 (7d 22h 55m) - First man to go into orbit twice

Total flight time 9d 9h 14m

Retired July 1970

Died 4 October 2004

 

 

Valentina Tereshkova (1937) USSR

Selected 1962

Vostok 6, 16 - 19 June 1963 (2d 22h 50m) - First woman in space

Retired 1997 (though not on flight status since 1963)

 

 

Patrick Baudry (1946) France

Selected 1980

Backup for Soyuz T-6 in 1982; transferred to NASA training for a Shuttle mission

STS-51G, 17 - 24 June 1985 (7d 1h 38m) - Deployed three communications satellites, also deployed and retrieved SPARTAN 1-01 experiment pallet

Retired June 1985

 

 

Information from Spacefacts website

 

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March 7th

 

Loren Acton (1936) USA

Selected 1978

STS-51F, 29 July - 6 August 1985 (7d 22h 45m) - Spacelab 2

Retired August 1985

 

 

Viktor Savinykh (1940) USSR

Selected 1978

Soyuz T-4/Salyut 6 Expedition 5, 12 March - 26 May 1981 (74d 17h 37m)

Soyuz T-13/Salyut 7 Expedition 4/5 , 6 June - 21 November 1985 (168d 3h 51m) - landed aboard Soyuz T-14 (mission curtailed due to illness - see tomorrow!)

Soyuz TM-5/Mir Taxi Flight 1

Total flight time 252d 17h 37m

Retired February 1989

 

 

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Am I the only one who finds the '”retired no flights” tag really sad? All that work they must have put in.

 

Great thread.

 

Graham

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February 8th

 

Peter Longhurst (1943) United Kingdom

Selected 1984

Would have flown a Shuttle mission in 1987 for the Skynet programme; cancelled following the Challenger accident

Retired 1986; no flights

Died 25 May 2010

 

 

Vladimir Vasyutin (1952) USSR

Selected 1976

Soyuz T-14/Salyut 7 Expedition 5, 17 September - 21 November 1985 (64d 21h 52m) - Mission cut short when Vasyutin came down with a serious urinary tract infection, NOT a nervous breakdown as stated by some sources at the time. Once on the ground it took six weeks of antibiotic treatment before he was cured.

Retired February 1986

Died 19 July 2002

 

 

Information from Spacefacts website

 

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On 3/7/2018 at 09:50, GrahamS said:

Am I the only one who finds the '”retired no flights” tag really sad? All that work they must have put in.

 

Great thread.

 

Graham

That doesn't apply in all cases. Some individuals are selected because they pass the various entry tests or were allocated a flight because they were associated with a payload (very common in the Shuttle era). After Challenger,  a number of payloads that had been scheduled to be put into space by the Shuttle were re-allocated to unmanned launchers - which of course negated the requirement for an on-board payload specialist. Many of these individuals hadn't done much in the way of astronaut training.

Quite a few of the American names listed were US military astronauts who were selected for programmes that were eventually cancelled, such as Dyna-Soar or MOL - and the mission specialists that the DoD wanted to fly on military Shuttle missions but which were cancelled after Challenger.

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1 hour ago, Eric Mc said:

That doesn't apply in all cases. Some individuals are selected because they pass the various entry tests or were allocated a flight because they were associated with a payload (very common in the Shuttle era). After Challenger,  a number of payloads that had been scheduled to be put into space by the Shuttle were re-allocated to unmanned launchers - which of course negated the requirement for an on-board payload specialist. Many of these individuals hadn't done much in the way of astronaut training.

If you look at Shuttle mission patches from the pre-Challenger era, you'll see that in many cases some of the crew names weren't on the patch itself but on a separate tab. For instance, here's the one from STS-51L itself:

STS-51-l.jpg

 

Christa McAuliffe was a schoolteacher, of course (hence the apple next to her name) and Greg Jarvis worked for Hughes Aircraft, who had a satellite on board. The "proper" astronauts, i.e. the NASA people, often saw the Payload Specialists as a class apart and when they designed the mission patches tended to put their names separately. 

 

In the 1970s the Soviet Union began flying cosmonauts from Warsaw Pact countries to Salyut 6, mainly for propaganda reasons. While these cosmonauts were fully trained, they were really just along for the ride in every sense. There's an apocryphal story that when one WP cosmonaut was undergoing his post-landing medical the doctors noticed that the backs of his hands were red. Fearing some mysterious space bug, they asked him about it, and were told that every time he tried to operate a switch the "real" cosmonauts would smack his hand and say, "Don't touch that!"

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March 9th

 

Yuri Gagarin (1932) USSR

Selected 1960

Vostok 1, 12 April 1961 (1h 46m) - First man in space - THE GUV'NOR!

Removed from flight status by order of the Kremlin, presumably to avoid risking a Soviet icon on another mission - sadly this was in vain

Killed 27 March 1968 in the crash of a MiG-15 during a routine training flight. His ashes were deposited in the Kremlin Wall.

 

 

German Arzamazov (1946) USSR

Selected 1978

Backed up two Mir expeditions but was removed from flight status for disciplinary reasons

Retired December 1995; no flights

 

 

Information from Spacefacts website

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March 10th

 

Laurel Clark (1961) USA

Selected 1996 (NASA Group 16)

STS-107, 16 January - 1 February 2003 (15d 22h 20m) - US Microgravity Lab 1. Killed when Orbiter Columbia broke up over Texas during re-entry.

Flight time shown is up until Loss of Signal

 

 

Information from Spacefacts website

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March 11th

 

Curtis Brown (1956) USA

Selected 1987 (NASA Group 12)

STS-47, 12 - 20 September 1992 (7d 22h 30m) - Spacelab J, Japanese-financed mission

STS-66, 3 - 14 November 1994 (10d 22h 34m) - ATLAS-3 mission studied how the energy of the Sun affects the Earth's climate and environment

STS-77, 19 - 29 May 1996 (10d 0h 39m) - Deployed and retrieved SPARTAN-207 free-flying experiment pallet and evaluated an inflatable antenna the size of a tennis court

STS-85, 7 - 19 August 1997 (11d 20h 26m) - Deployed and retireved CRISTA SPAS-2 pallet and tested a new robot arm to be installed on the Japanese ISS module

STS-95, 29 October - 7 November 1998 (8d 21h 44m) - Deployed and retrieved SPARTAN pallet - this was John Glenn's second spaceflight at the age of 77

STS-103, 20 - 28 December 1999, 7d 23h 10m - Third Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, replaced faulty gyros and installed a new computer

Total flight time 57d 17h 3m

Retired December 1999

 

 

Marcos Pontes (1963) Brazil

Selected 1998

Soyuz TMA-8/Spaceflight Participant to the ISS, 30 March - 8 April 2006 (9d 21h 17m) - Expedition 12/13 crew exchange; landed aboard Soyuz TMA-7

Still on active flight status

 

 

Pavel Mukhortov (1966) USSR

Selected 1990

Journalist at Sovetskaya Molodyozh [Soviet Youth] ; underwent basic cosmonaut training

Retired February 1992; no flights

 

 

Information from Spacefacts website

 

 

 

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March 12th

 

Wally Schirra (1923) USA

Selected 1959 (NASA Group 1)

MA-8 (Sigma 7), 3 October 1962 (9h 13m) - Third orbital Mercury flight

Gemini VI-A, 15 - 16 December 1965 (1d 1h 51m) - First orbital rendezvous, with the previously-launched Gemini VII

Apollo 7, 11 - 22 October 1968 (10d 20h 9m) - First manned Apollo flight

Only man to fly Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft

Total flight time 12d 7h 13m

Retired July 1969

Died 2 May 2007

 

 

John Konrad (1949) USA

Selected 1984

Engineer with Hughes Aircraft; assigned to STS-61L but mission cancelled following the Challenger accident

Retired 1988; no flights

 

 

Patricia Hilliard-Robertson (1963) USA

Selected 1998 (NASA Group 17)

Died 24 May 2001 from injuries sustained in an air crash two days earlier; no flights

 

 

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March 13th

 

Aleksandr Samokutyayev (Russia) 1970

Selected 2003

Soyuz TMA-21/ISS Expeditions 27/28, 4 April - 16 September 2011 (164d 5h 41m)

Soyuz TMA-14M/ISS Expeditions 41/42, 25 September 2014 - 12 March 2015 (167d 5h 42m)

Total flight time 331d 11h 23m

Retired April 2017

 

 

 

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March 14th

 

Frank Borman (1928) USA

Selected 1962 (NASA Group 2)

Gemini VII, 4 - 18 December 1965 (13d 18h 35m) - Passive spacecraft in the first orbital rendezvous (with Gemini VI-A)

Apollo 8, 21 - 27 December 1968 (6d 3h 0m) - First manned lunar orbit

Total flight time 19h 21h 35m

Retired July 1970

 

 

Eugene Cernan (1934) USA

Selected 1963 (NASA Group 3)

Gemini IX-A, 3 - 6 June 1966 (3d 0h 20m) - Unable to dock with target craft as shroud had not separated; test of AMU backpack aborted when he became severely overheated

Apollo 10, 18 - 26 May 1969 (8d 0h 3m) - 'Dress rehearsal' for lunar landing; flew LM Snoopy to 15.6km of the surface (the point where Powered Descent would begin)

Apollo 17, 7 - 19 December 1972 (12d 13h 52m) - Eleventh man on the Moon and the last to leave the surface

Total flight time 23d 14h 15m

Retired July 1976

Died 16 January 2017

 

 

William Lenoir (1938) USA

Selected 1967 (NASA Group 6)

STS-5, 11 - 16 November 1982 (5d 2h 14m) - First 'operational' Shuttle mission, with 4-man crew; deployed two communications satellites

Retired October 1984

Died in a bicycle accident 26 August 2010

 

 

Natalya Kuleshova (1956) USSR

Selected 1980

Retired July 1992; no flights

 

 

Pedro Dugue (1963) Spain

Selected 1992 (ESA Group 2)

STS-95, 29 October - 7 November 1998 (8d 21h 44m) - Deployed and retrieved SPARTAN pallet - this was John Glenn's second spaceflight at the age of 77

Soyuz TMA-3, 18 - 28 October 2003 (9d 21h 2m) - ISS crew exchange, Expedition 8 up, Exp. 7 down. Duque was Spaceflight Participant and landed in Soyuz TMA-2 

Total flight time to date 18d 18h 46m

Still technically on active flight status

 

 

Michael Fincke (1967) USA

Selected 1996 (NASA Group 16)

Soyuz TMA-4/ISS Expedition 9, 19 April - 24 October 2004 (187d 21h 16m)

Soyuz TMA-13/ISS Expedition 18, 12 October 2008 - 8 April 2009 (178d 0h 13m)

STS-134, 16 May - 1 June 2011 (15d 17h 38m) - Delivered Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 to the ISS; final flight of Endeavour

Total flight time to date 381d 15h 7m

Still on active status

 

 

Information from Spacefacts website

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Quite ironic - just watched a good Netflix documentary on Eugene Cernan today “The last man on the moon”, and it just happened to be his birthday today? 

 

Cheers... this is a good thread.

Dave

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March 15th

 

Alan Bean (1932) USA

Selected 1963 (NASA Group 3)

Apollo 12, 14 - 24th November 1969 (10d 4h 36m) - Fourth man on the Moon

Skylab 3, 28 July - 25 September 1973 (59d 11h 9m) - Second expedition

Total flight time 69d 15h 45m

Retired February 1981 - currently a professional artist on space-related themes

 

Bean replaced C.C. Williams in the Conrad/Gordon Apollo crew after Williams died in a plane crash. At Bean's suggestion a fourth star was added to the Apollo 12 mission patch to represent him

 

 

Larisa Pozharskaya (1947) USSR

Selected 1980

Retired 1993; no flights

Died of cancer 18 February 2002

 

 

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