Loren Acton

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Loren Acton
Loren Acton
Country: United States
Organization: NASA
selected on August 9, 1978
( Spacelab-2 group )
Calls: 1 space flight
Begin: July 29, 1985
Landing: August 6, 1985
Time in space: 7d 22h 45m
retired on August 1985
Space flights

Loren Wilber Acton (born March 7, 1936 in Lewistown , Montana , USA ) is an American physicist . He took part in a shuttle mission as a payload specialist .

education

Acton was born the son of a cattle farmer, the youngest of six children. After high school he worked from 1954 two years at Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland ( Oregon ) with theology. He then studied engineering at Montana State University in Bozeman . After graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1959, he continued his studies at the University of Colorado . His field of study was astrogeology with a focus on the physics of the sun. Acton received his doctorate in 1965. The subject of his doctoral thesis was "X-Radiation of the Sun" ("The X-rays of the sun").

Research activity

After graduating, Acton went to California in 1964 . At the Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory he was a member of the scientific staff there for almost 30 years. In 1993 he left the Space Sciences Laboratory and accepted a research professorship at Montana State University. He is still working there in the Department of Physics.

In addition, Acton has been a leading scientist in NASA's solar research program since 1964 (from 1988 to 1991 he was a member of NASA's Space Science and Applications Advisory Committee). Among other things, he contributed experiments for eight sounding rockets and developed an X-ray polychromator for the solar research satellite SMM ( Solar Maximum Mission ).

His only space flight

Acton was a member of the crew of STS-51-F . It was the third Spacelab mission - for the first time, no modules were used, only pallets - and was carried out from July 29 to August 6, 1985. Acton, along with Dr. Alan Title developed a crucial experiment for the eight-day Spacelab-2 mission: the Solar Optical Universal Polarimeter (SOUP) to study the magnetic field of the sun, which he supervised during the flight. In addition to Acton, Dr. John-David Francis Bartoe (astrophysicist at the US Naval Research Laboratory) as the crew's payload specialist.

Awards

In 1989 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science .

Private

Acton married Evelyn Oldenburger in 1957, with whom he has a daughter and a son.

See also

Web links and receipts

Commons : Loren Acton  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ P. Stache: Raumfahrer von A bis Z. Military Publishing House of the German Democratic Republic (VEB), Berlin 1988, p. 11.
  2. ↑ Fellows of the AAAS: Loren Acton. American Association for the Advancement of Science, archived from the original on January 22, 2018 ; accessed on January 22, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Acton, Loren
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Acton, Loren Wilber
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astrophysicist and astronaut
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Lewistown , Montana