Jerry Ross

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Jerry Ross
Jerry Ross
Country: United States
Organization: NASA
selected on May 19, 1980
( 9th NASA Group )
Calls: 7 space flights
Start of the
first space flight: 		November 27, 1985
Landing of the
last space flight: 		April 19, 2002
Time in space: 58d 0h 52min
EVA inserts: 9
EVA total duration: 58h 18min
retired on January 20, 2012
Space flights

Jerry Lynn Ross (born January 20, 1948 in Crown Point , Indiana ) is a former American astronaut and was the first person to undertake seven space flights.

education

Ross studied mechanical engineering at Purdue University , graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1970 and received a master's degree in 1972 .

He then went to the US Air Force and worked in the ramjet research laboratories at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio . There he made studies on supersonic missiles that are launched on a track slide. These studies were used for the later ASALM rocket. From 1974 to 1975 he was the head of the research facilities there.

In 1976 he completed the Air Force test pilot course and then went to Edwards Air Force Base in California . In his new role he was the test pilot of the Boeing RC-135S and the Rockwell B-1 . As the lead test pilot of the B-1 project, he was in charge of the bomber's flight control systems, briefed all crew members of the test crews and was responsible for preparing the mission planning.

He has flown over 21 different types of aircraft and completed over 3,900 hours of flight time, most of them in military aircraft. He officially resigned from the Air Force on March 31, 2000.

Astronaut activity

In 1979 Ross became utility officer for the space shuttle at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center . A year later he was selected as an astronaut and was assigned the special areas of the space shuttle's gripper arm and extraordi- nary activities (EVAs).

He was in the support teams for the space flights STS-41-B , STS-41-C and STS-51-A , as well as liaison officer ( CapCom ) for the space flights STS-41-B, STS-41-C, STS-41- D , STS-51-A and STS-51-D .

STS-61-B

On this mission with the Shuttle Atlantis , in which three communications satellites were launched, he was a mission specialist. Together with Sherwood Spring , Ross carried out two outboard missions in which techniques for assembling structural elements were tested in weightlessness. The flight was the second night start of a space shuttle and had to be shortened by one and a half hours, since bad weather would otherwise have made a landing impossible.

STS-62-A

STS-62-A was scheduled to launch in July 1986 as the first shuttle mission from Space Launch Complex 6 at Vandenberg Air Force Base . Robert Crippen would have commanded the Discovery on the first shuttle mission in a polar orbit for the US Department of Defense. The crew would have consisted of Guy Gardner , Dale Gardner , Richard Mullane , Jerry Ross, as well as the military rastronaut John Watterson (MSE) and the politician Edward Aldridge , alongside Crippen . The flight was canceled after the US Department of Defense withdrew from the shuttle program following the Challenger disaster . Even later, no more shuttles took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

STS-27

This four-day mission with the shuttle Atlantis was a secret mission of the US Department of Defense , during which the reconnaissance satellite Lacrosse 1 was exposed in December 1988 .

STS-37

During this mission, also with the space shuttle Atlantis, the gamma-ray observatory CGRO was brought into space in April 1991 . Since there were problems with the activation of the antenna, Ross and his colleague Jay Apt had to make an unscheduled exit into space, during which they could manually activate the antenna after fifteen minutes. The following day he and Apt performed another scheduled space exit, leaving Ross 10 hours and 49 minutes outside of the space shuttle during this mission.

STS-55

Ross's fourth flight took him into space on the Columbia space shuttle . The flight is known in Germany as the second German Spacelab mission "D-2". The ten-day flight had to be postponed several times due to various technical problems and could only begin on April 26, 1993. An IMAX camera was carried for the first time on the mission . On this flight, too, the weather did not play along with the landing and so the space shuttle had to land at Edwards Air Force Base . On board were two German astronauts, Ulrich Walter and Hans Schlegel , who made their first space flight.

STS-74

He completed his fifth flight again with the space shuttle Atlantis, which brought the SDM coupling module, developed and built in Russia, to the Mir space station . The aim of the mission was to supply the space station with supplies. An IMAX camera was also carried on this mission. With the films made in this way, many cinema-goers around the world were later able to get an idea of ​​life and work on the station with impressive images from space. The weather played along for a landing on this mission, and it landed as planned.

STS-88

On this mission, Ross came into space on the space shuttle Endeavor . The task of this mission was to connect the second section of the international space station , the US connection node Unity , with the first Russian module Zarya , which is already in space, and thus to put the space station into operation. Ross took over three EVAs and did the assembly work. In addition, two smaller satellites were deployed, one of which is Argentine . With this space flight, he and his fellow astronauts John Young , who is his role model, Story Musgrave and Franklin Chang-Diaz with six space flights equal.

STS-110

On his last mission he came back into space on the space shuttle Atlantis. The mission task was to bring the first of up to nine possible structural elements ( S0 ) of the international space station into space and assemble it. In doing so, the EVA experience of Ross was used and he was allowed to undertake two space missions with a total of 14 hours and 9 minutes in total. After this flight, he was the first person to fly into space seven times.

After the space flights

Ross took over the management of the Vehicle Integration Test Office at the Johnson Space Center and chief ronaut for safety and engineering (NESC). On January 20, 2012, he left NASA.

Summary

No. mission function Flight date Flight duration
1 STS-61-B Mission specialist November 27 - December 3, 1985 06d 21h 04min
2 STS-27 Mission specialist December 2 - December 6, 1988 04d 09h 59min
3 STS-37 Mission specialist April 5 - April 11, 1991 05d 23h 32min
4th STS-55 Mission specialist April 26 - May 6, 1993 09d 23h 39min
5 STS-74 Mission specialist November 12 - November 20, 1995 08d 04h 30min
6th STS-88 Mission specialist December 4 - December 16, 1998 11d 19h 17min
7th STS-110 Mission specialist April 8 - April 19, 2002 10d 19h 42min

Special features and records

  • first person to do seven space flights ( STS-110 )
  • first grandfather in an EVA (STS-110)
  • the only astronaut to have flown five times on the space shuttle Atlantis

Honors

  • The elementary school in his hometown is named after him
  • He is an honorary doctorate from Purdue University

Private

Jerry Ross is married with two children. His wife personally prepared the space traveler's food that he took with him on his missions and consumed in space. His daughter Amy, a NASA spacesuit designer, designed the gloves he used in his spacecraft activities during STS-88.

See also

Web links

Commons : Jerry L. Ross  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Diane Poulton: Retiring astronaut Jerry Ross remembers region roots. NWI Times January 17, 2012, archived from the original August 7, 2012 ; accessed on January 23, 2012 (English).
  2. ↑ Heather R. Smith: Amy Ross, Spacesuit Designer. NASA Educational Technology Services, November 13, 2008, accessed February 24, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Ross, Jerry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ross, Jerry Lynn (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astronaut
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Crown Point , Indiana , United States