Richard Harrison Truly

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Richard Truly
Richard Truly
Country: United States
Organization: NASA
selected on November 12, 1965
( 1st MOL group )
August 14, 1969
(7th NASA group)
Calls: 2 space flights
Start of the
first space flight: 		November 12, 1981
Landing of the
last space flight: 		5th September 1983
Time in space: 8d 07h 21min
retired on October 1, 1983
Space flights

Richard Harrison "Dick" Truly (born November 12, 1937 in Fayette , Mississippi , United States ) is a former American astronaut . From 1989 to 1992 Truly was the eighth head (administrator) of the US space agency NASA .

education

After attending schools in Fayette and Meridian , Truly received a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1959 .

US Air Force

In 1965, Truly was selected as one of the first US Air Force military astronauts for the MOL program . In August 1969, after the MOL program was terminated, he became a NASA astronaut.

NASA activity

Preparation of the space shuttle flights

Truly was involved in the shuttle program in the 1970s. He was the pilot (under Commander Joe Engle ) of one of the two teams that examined the behavior of the space shuttle on approach as part of the ALT ( Approach and Landing Tests ) program between February and November 1977.

STS-1

Truly was a replacement pilot for the first STS-1 shuttle mission . The substitute in command was Joe Engle .

STS-2

On November 12, 1981 Richard Truly started as a pilot on the space shuttle Columbia (OV-102) for its first flight into space . STS-2 was the first space flight in which a manned spacecraft was reused: the Columbia space shuttle had already been used on the STS-1 mission. Commander was again Joe Engle .

STS-8

On August 30, 1983, Truly flew his second mission into space as commander of the Space Shuttle Challenger (OV-99). That was the first night take-off and the first night landing in the space shuttle program.

Administrative tasks

Truly had left the space agency in the fall of 1983 and was in command of Naval Space Command in Dahlgren, Virginia . Three weeks after the Challenger disaster , he returned to NASA on February 20, 1986 as "Associate Administrator for Space Flight". Its primary objective was to monitor the return of the space shuttle to flight operations. In addition, he was also responsible for longer-term questions, such as B. whether you should replace the lost Challenger with a new space shuttle or the role of the shuttle in the future. Although the cause of the Challenger accident was found within a few days, it took a lot longer to fix. The next shuttle, the Discovery, took 31 months to take off on September 29, 1988. In May 1989, Truly was named the eighth head (administrator) of NASA. Shortly before taking up this office, which he held until May 1992, he resigned as Vice Admiral from the US Navy.

According to NASA

After serving at NASA, Truly became vice president and director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute (part of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta ). From 1997 to November 2004, Truly was head of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden , Colorado .

Private

Richard Truly is married and has three children.

See also

Web links

Commons : Richard Truly  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Great Images in NASA ( Memento from June 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
personal data
SURNAME Truly, Richard Harrison
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Truly, Dick (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astronaut
DATE OF BIRTH November 12, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Fayette , Mississippi