Robert Lee Curbeam

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Robert Curbeam
Robert Curbeam
Country: United States
Organization: NASA
selected on December 8, 1994
(15th NASA Group)
Calls: 3 space flights
Start of the
first space flight: 		August 7, 1997
Landing of the
last space flight: 		December 22, 2006
Time in space: 37d 14h 34m
EVA inserts: 7th
EVA total duration: 45h 34m
retired on December 2007
Space flights

Robert Lee "Beamer" Curbeam, Jr. (born March 5, 1962 in Baltimore , Maryland , USA ) is a former American astronaut .

Life

Upon successfully completing high school in 1980, Curbeam signed up for a career in the U.S. Navy . This funded his studies at the United States Naval Academy (USNA) in Annapolis (Maryland) , which he graduated in 1984 as an aerospace engineer.

After leaving the USNA, Curbeam was trained as a pilot by the Navy. And after an advanced course to become a radar interceptor on the F-14 “Tomcat” fighter aircraft , he joined Jagdgeschwader 11 in 1986, with which he sailed the world's oceans on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal .

Back in the United States, Curbeam attended the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, from 1989 . First he studied aerospace engineering ( Master 1990) and then aerospace engineering (Master 1991). In addition, he attended the United States Navy Fighter Weapons School in Miramar in his final academic year and was trained as a tactical officer. This course has been known as "TOPGUN" since the film of the same name starring Tom Cruise, although its official name is Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor (sometimes the school that has since moved to Nevada is incorrectly referred to as TOPGUN).

Curbeam then worked for the next two years at the Strike Aircraft Test Directorate in Patuxent River, Maryland. As a project officer he modified the separation mechanism of the air-to-surface missiles of the F-14 "Tomcat". In August 1994 he returned to USNA after a decade and worked as a teacher in the Weapons and Systems Engineering Department for another six months.

Astronaut activity

Curbeam didn't really want to be an astronaut at all. Although he was attracted to space travel, it was more the technical side - an engineer who designs spaceships was more to his taste. That all changed when he and his class from the Naval Postgraduate School visited the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in 1991 . He heard a lecture from Kathy Thornton, who was talking about her first space flight with STS-33 . During these three days in Houston ( Texas summed up) he even astronaut will want to resolve.

Curbeam was presented with NASA's 15th astronaut group in December 1994. In early March 1995, the cadre began their one-year basic course, which consisted of ten pilots, nine mission specialists, and two foreign candidates from Japan and Canada .

In mid-September 1996, Curbeam was selected for its maiden flight. STS-85 was carried out by Discovery in August 1997. For the second time (after STS-66 three years earlier) the German astronomy satellite CRISTA-SPAS was on board a space shuttle. Suspended shortly after the start with the help of the gripper arm , the platform carried out measurements in the high atmosphere for a week. The device developed by the University of Wuppertal was then caught again and stowed in the payload bay.

Immediately after STS-85, Curbeam was preparing for its next space flight. Together with Chris Hadfield , he was set up for the STS-100 . Both trained for spacecraft operations (EVAs) on the International Space Station (ISS) . In September 1999, however, Curbeam was nominated for the STS-98 mission, replacing Mark Charles Lee , who was removed from the crew for unpublished reasons. In February 2001, Curbeam then brought the US Destiny module to the ISS with STS-98 . Together with astronaut Tom Jones, Curbeam undertook three EVAs to mount the laboratory on the space station and make it operational.

Curbeam during the first EVA of STS-116

Subsequently, Curbeam was assigned to ensure smooth radio communications during space missions and worked as the chief of the liaison officers in the control center. At the beginning of 2002, he briefly took on a management position at NASA headquarters in Washington as deputy director of the Mission Security Department.

Shortly afterwards he was nominated for his third flight as a mission specialist on STS-116 , with which he took off on December 10, 2006 for the International Space Station. During this mission, he went into space four times, making him the first astronaut to do so during a space shuttle mission. The landing took place on December 22, 2006 at the Kennedy Space Center .

Private

Curbeam is married and has two children.

Individual evidence

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

See also

Web links

Commons : Robert Curbeam  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Curbeam, Robert Lee
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Curbeam, Robert Lee Jr .; Curbeam, Beamer (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astronaut
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH Baltimore , Maryland , USA