Fred Weldon Leslie | |
---|---|
Born | Ancón, Panama | 19 December 1951
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Scientist |
Space career | |
NASA Payload Specialist | |
Time in space | 15d 21h 34m |
Missions | STS-73 |
Mission insignia |
Fred Weldon Leslie is an American scientist who flew on the NASA STS-73 Space Shuttle mission as a payload specialist.
Leslie was born on December 19, 1951, in Ancón, Panama. He is an instrument rated commercial pilot with more than 900 hours in various aircraft. Leslie graduated from Irving High School, Irving, Texas, in 1970, then received a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering science from The University of Texas in 1974, and a master's degree and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in meteorology with a minor in fluid mechanics from the University of Oklahoma in 1977 and 1979, respectively. Leslie served on the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee, he is a member of the American Meteorological Society, Tau Beta Pi, Chi Epsilon Pi, and the United States Parachute Association. He holds a World Record as a participant in the 200 person freefall formation set October 1992.
After Leslie earned his Ph.D. in 1979, he served as a post doctoral research associate at Purdue University studying fluid vortex dynamics. In 1980, he worked for the Universities Space Research Association as a visiting scientist at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC).
Leslie began work for NASA in 1980 as a research scientist in the Space Science Laboratory at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Since 1983, he has served as a co-investigator for the Geophysical Fluid Flow Cell experiment which examines spherical rotating convection relevant to the atmospheres of stars and planets. The experiment flew on Spacelab 3 and is also a part of the United States Microgravity Laboratory-2 (USML-2) payload. Leslie was a principal investigator for the Fluid Interface and Bubble Experiment examining the behavior of a rotating free surface aboard NASA's KC-135 aircraft flying low-gravity trajectories. He is an author on 27 journal papers, 45 conference papers, and nine NASA reports involving atmospheric and fluid dynamic phenomena. Leslie also worked in the MSFC Neutral Buoyancy Simulator as a suited subject and safety diver supporting procedure tests for extra-vehicular activity.
In 1987, he became chief of the Fluid Dynamics Branch where he directed and conducted research in both laboratory and theoretical investigations along with more than a dozen scientists in the Branch. He was also the mission scientist for Spacelab J (STS-47) coordinating more than 40 domestic and Japanese experiments in fluid dynamics, crystal growth, and life science during the 8-day mission.
Leslie is a researcher at the Marshall Space Flight Center. He is a member of the research team analyzing data from the Geophysical Fluid Flow Cell experiment that flew on STS-73/USML-2.
Leslie flew as a payload specialist on STS-73 launched on October 20, 1995, and landed at the Kennedy Space Center on November 5, 1995. The 16-day mission aboard Space Shuttle Columbia focused on materials science, biotechnology, combustion science, and fluid physics contained within the pressurized Spacelab module.
The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), located in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, is the U.S. government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center. As the largest NASA center, MSFC's first mission was developing the Saturn launch vehicles for the Apollo program. Marshall has been the lead center for the Space Shuttle main propulsion and external tank; payloads and related crew training; International Space Station (ISS) design and assembly; computers, networks, and information management; and the Space Launch System. Located on the Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, MSFC is named in honor of General of the Army George C. Marshall.
Spacelab was a reusable laboratory developed by European Space Agency (ESA) and used on certain spaceflights flown by the Space Shuttle. The laboratory comprised multiple components, including a pressurized module, an unpressurized carrier, and other related hardware housed in the Shuttle's cargo bay. The components were arranged in various configurations to meet the needs of each spaceflight.
STS-9 was the ninth NASA Space Shuttle mission and the sixth mission of the Space Shuttle Columbia. Launched on 28 November 1983, the ten-day mission carried the first Spacelab laboratory module into orbit.
Ulf Dietrich Merbold is a German physicist and astronaut who flew to space three times, becoming the first West German citizen in space and the first non-American to fly on a NASA spacecraft. Merbold flew on two Space Shuttle missions and on a Russian mission to the space station Mir, spending a total of 49 days in space.
STS-50 was a NASA Space Shuttle mission, the 12th mission of the Columbia orbiter. Columbia landed at Kennedy Space Center for the first time ever due to bad weather at Edwards Air Force Base caused by the remnants of Hurricane Darby.
Taylor Gun-Jin Wang is a Chinese-born American scientist and in 1985, became the first person of Chinese origin to go into space. While an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Wang was a payload specialist on the Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-51-B.
STS-51-B was the 17th flight of the NASA Space Shuttle program and the seventh flight of Space Shuttle Challenger. The launch of Challenger on April 29, 1985, was delayed by 2 minutes and 18 seconds, due to a launch processing failure. Challenger was initially rolled out to the pad to launch on the STS-51-E mission. The shuttle was rolled back when a timing issue emerged with the TDRS-B satellite. When STS-51-E was canceled, Challenger was remanifested with the STS-51-B payloads. The shuttle landed successfully on May 6, 1985, after a week-long mission.
STS-61-A was the 22nd mission of NASA's Space Shuttle program. It was a scientific Spacelab mission, funded and directed by West Germany – hence the non-NASA designation of D-1. STS-61-A was the ninth and last successful flight of Space Shuttle Challenger before the disaster. STS-61-A holds the current record for the largest crew—eight people—aboard any single spacecraft for the entire period from launch to landing.
STS-47 was NASA's 50th Space Shuttle mission of the program, as well as the second mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. The mission mainly involved conducting experiments in life and material sciences inside Spacelab-J, a collaborative laboratory inside the shuttle's payload bay sponsored by NASA and the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). This mission carried Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese astronaut aboard the shuttle, Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to go to space, and the only married couple to fly together on the shuttle, Mark C. Lee and Jan Davis, contrary to NASA policy.
James Frederick Buchli is a retired United States Marine aviator and former NASA astronaut who flew on four Space Shuttle missions.
Norman Earl Thagard, is an American scientist and former U.S. Marine Corps officer and naval aviator and NASA astronaut. He is the first American to ride to space on board a Russian vehicle, and can be considered the first American cosmonaut. He did this on March 14, 1995, in the Soyuz TM-21 spacecraft for the Russian Mir-18 mission.
STS-73 was a Space Shuttle program mission, during October–November 1995, on board the Space Shuttle Columbia. The mission was the second mission for the United States Microgravity Laboratory. The crew, who spent 16 days in space, were broken up into 2 teams, the red team and the blue team. The mission also included several Detailed Test Objectives or DTO's.
STS-83 was a NASA Space Shuttle mission flown by Columbia. It was a science research mission that achieved orbit successfully, but the planned duration was a failure due to a technical problem with a fuel cell that resulted in the abort of the 15 day duration. Columbia returned to Earth just shy of four days. The mission was re-flown as STS-94 with the same crew later that year.
STS-94 was a mission of the United States Space Shuttle Columbia, launched on 1 July 1997.
Jeffrey Alan Hoffman is an American former NASA astronaut and currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT.
Roger Keith Crouch is an American scientist and astronaut who flew as a payload specialist on two NASA Space Shuttle missions in 1997.
Lawrence James DeLucas is an American biochemist who flew aboard NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-50 as a Payload Specialist. He was born on July 11, 1950, in Syracuse, New York, and is currently married with three children. His recreational interests include basketball, scuba diving, bowling, model airplanes, astronomy and reading.
Gregory Thomas Linteris is an American scientist who flew as a payload specialist on two NASA Space Shuttle missions in 1997.
A payload specialist (PS) was an individual selected and trained by commercial or research organizations for flights of a specific payload on a NASA Space Shuttle mission. People assigned as payload specialists included individuals selected by the research community, a company or consortium flying a commercial payload aboard the spacecraft, and non-NASA astronauts designated by international partners.
Mary Helen Johnston, later also Mary Helen McCay, is an American scientist and former astronaut. Working with NASA as an engineer in the 1960s and '70s, Johnston aspired to be an astronaut; she unsuccessfully applied in 1980 before becoming a payload specialist in 1983. Johnston retired from NASA in 1986 without having gone to space. She is a professor at Florida Institute of Technology.