Mark C. Lee

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Mark Lee
Mark Lee
Country: United States
Organization: NASA
selected on May 23, 1984
( 10th NASA Group )
Calls: 4 space flights
Start of the
first space flight:
May 4th 1989
Landing of the
last space flight:
February 21, 1997
Time in space: 32d 21h 46min
EVA inserts: 4th
EVA total duration: 26h 1min
retired on July 1, 2001
Space flights

Mark Charles Lee (born August 14, 1952 in Viroqua , Vernon County , Wisconsin ) is a retired American astronaut .

education

Lee received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the United States Air Force Academy in 1974 and a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1980 .

Military career

After his pilot training at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas and further training for the F-4 Phantom II at Luke Air Force Base , Arizona, Lee was stationed at Kadena Air Base , Okinawa for two and a half years . In 1980 he was transferred to Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, where he was employed in the AWACS program. In 1982 he moved to Hill Air Force Base in Utah.

Astronaut activity

In May 1984, Lee was selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA. After his training as a mission specialist, he was deployed in the field of spacecraft activities, the IUS rocket upper stages, the Spacelab and the international space station . Lee also served as the Liaison Spokesperson ( CAPCOM ) and on the support teams at the Kennedy Space Center .

STS-61-M

The Challenger mission STS-61-M should have launched a TDRS satellite in July 1986. The crew would have consisted of Loren Shriver, Bryan O'Connor, Mark Lee, Sally Ride, William Fisher and the US industrial astronaut payload specialist Robert Wood. This flight was canceled after the Challenger disaster.

STS-30

On May 4, 1989, Lee flew into space for the first time on the space shuttle Atlantis . The payload was the Venus probe Magellan , which was accelerated towards Venus with an IUS upper stage . STS-30 was the first mission to use a space shuttle to launch an interplanetary spacecraft.

STS-47

On September 12, 1992 Lee started as a mission specialist on the space shuttle Endeavor for the tenth Spacelab mission. On board 43 experiments of various kinds were carried out, for example it was tested whether hornets had the ability to build honeycombs in weightlessness . The result was negative. Experiments were also carried out in the medical field. For the first time, a married couple, Mark Lee and Jan Davis , flew into space. Lee and Davis had married in secret. By the time NASA learned of this, it was too late to incorporate replacements.

STS-64

Lee tests the SAFER maneuvering device in free space without safety lines during STS-64

Lee made his third flight in September 1994 as a mission specialist with the space shuttle Discovery . The LITE laser-optical radar system was tested as part of STS-64 . Another task was the deployment and recovery of the astronomical research satellite SPARTAN-201 , a free-flying satellite for researching the solar wind and the solar corona . After eleven days in space, he landed on September 20, 1994 at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

STS-82

Lee (foreground) and Smith on an EVA during STS-82

Lee flew on the space shuttle Discovery on February 11, 1997 on the second maintenance mission for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Lee was involved in three of the five space exits (EVAs) during which the telescope was repaired. In addition to a tape recorder, which was replaced by a core memory, the HST received the NICMOS infrared camera and the STIS spectroscope . Two spectrographs have been expanded for this purpose.

STS-98

Lee was scheduled for another shuttle flight to the ISS, but was removed from the crew in September 1999 for undisclosed reasons and replaced by Robert Lee Curbeam .

According to NASA

After leaving NASA in July 2001, he moved to Orbital Technologies in Wisconsin.

Private

Mark Lee is third married and has two children. His second wife was NASA astronaut Jan Davis .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Shuttle astronaut taken off crew for ISS mission. CNN, September 8, 1999, accessed June 16, 2009 .

Web links

Commons : Mark C. Lee  - collection of images, videos and audio files