Robert D. Cabana

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Robert D. Cabana
Robert D. Cabana
Country: United States
Organization: NASA
selected on June 4, 1985
( 11th NASA Group )
Calls: 4 space flights
Start of the
first space flight: 		October 6, 1990
Landing of the
last space flight: 		December 16, 1998
Time in space: 37d 22h 42min
retired on April 2004
Space flights

Robert Donald "Bob" Cabana (born January 23, 1949 in Minneapolis , Minnesota ) is a former American astronaut and manager of NASA.

Cabana received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the United States Naval Academy in 1971 and then joined the United States Marine Corps . After stationing as a naval aviator in North Carolina and Iwakuni ( Japan ), he returned to Pensacola ( Florida ) in 1975 , where his training had started, and received his pilot's license in September 1976. He attended the Naval Test Pilot School on Naval Air Station Patuxent River , Maryland, and received his test pilot qualification in 1981. He was then deployed to the Naval Air Test Center, which is also located on the Patuxent River base. Before being selected as an astronaut, he worked as an Assistant Operations Officer in Iwakuni, Japan. In August 2000, Cabana retired from the US Marine Corps.

Astronaut activity

Cabana was selected as a candidate astronaut by NASA in June 1985. After training as a shuttle pilot, he was employed as the software coordinator for the space shuttle until November 1986. He then worked for two and a half years as Deputy Head of Aircraft Operations at the Johnson Space Center (JSC). He then worked in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL) and as a liaison officer ( CAPCOM ) on shuttle missions.

From 1994 to 1997, Cabana was the head of the astronauts office.

STS-41

On October 6, 1990, Cabana took off as a pilot of the space shuttle Discovery on its first flight into space . During this mission, the heaviest payload to date, the Ulysses spacecraft , was launched. Ulysses is a joint project between NASA and ESA to research the sun .

STS-53

On December 2, 1992, Cabana flew again into space on the space shuttle Discovery. This mission was carried out on behalf of the US Department of Defense with a secret payload.

STS-65

For the "International Microgravity Laboratory" (IML-2) mission, he flew into space on July 8, 1994 as commander on the Columbia space shuttle. 82 experiments from the fields of biology and materials science were on the program during the 15-day Spacelab flight. On July 23, he landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida .

STS-88

The ISS after STS-88: Unity above, below the Sarja module

On his last space flight, Cabana led the first shuttle flight to the ISS on December 4, 1998 as commander of the space shuttle Endeavor . The task of this mission was to connect the second section of the International Space Station (ISS), 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. The new module and other hardware were installed during three spacecraft missions (EVA). The satellites Mighty Sat 1 (US Air Force) and SAC-A ( Argentina ) were also deployed.

Manager at NASA

After his last space flight in December 1998, Cabana worked as deputy director of the so-called Flight Crew Operations Directorate, which decides on the composition of the team for the individual missions. In October 1999 he joined the ISS program. From August 2001 to September 2002 he was in Russia as part of the Human Space Flight program , where he acted as NASA contact for the Russian space agencies.

After his return, Cabana was briefly deputy director of the ISS program and from November 2002 to March 2004 director of the flight crew operations directorate. In April 2004, Cabana retired from the astronaut corps. He then took on a new area of ​​responsibility as Deputy Director of the JSC. In October 2007, he took over the management of NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center test facility . Cabana has been the director of the Kennedy Space Center since October 26, 2008 .

Private

Robert Cabana and his wife Nancy have three children.

See also

Web links

Commons : Robert D. Cabana  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ NASA: Cabana Assumes Role As Tenth NASA Kennedy Space Center Director. October 30, 2008, accessed November 17, 2008 .
personal data
SURNAME Cabana, Robert D.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cabana, Robert Donald; Cabana, Bob (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astronaut
DATE OF BIRTH January 23, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Minneapolis , Minnesota