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DONALD R. PETTIT (PH.D.)
NASA ASTRONAUT
PERSONAL DATA: Born April 20, 1955 in Silverton, Oregon. Married. Two children.
EDUCATION: Graduated from Silverton Union High School, Silverton, Oregon, in 1973; received a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from Oregon State University in 1978; and a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona in 1983.
EXPERIENCE: Staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico from 1984-1996. Projects included reduced gravity fluid flow and materials processing experiments on board the NASA KC-135 airplane, atmospheric spectroscopy measurements on noctolucent clouds seeded from sounding rocket payloads, volcano fumarole gas sampling on active volcanos, and problems in detonation physics applied to weapon systems. He was a member of the Synthesis Group, slated with assembling the technology to return to the moon and explore Mars (1990), and the Space Station Freedom Redesign Team (1993).
NASA EXPERIENCE: Selected by NASA in April 1996, Dr. Pettit reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1996. Having completed two years of training and evaluation, he is qualified for flight selection as a mission specialist. Initially, he was assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Computer Support Branch. He recently completed his first space flight as NASA ISS Science Officer aboard the International Space Station. Dr. Pettit has logged over 161 days in space, and 2 EVAs (spacewalks) totaling 13 hours and 17 minutes.
SPACE FLIGHT EXPERIENCE: Expedition-6, Nov. 23, 2002 to May 3, 2003. During 5-1/2 months aboard the International Space Station, the crew worked with numerous U.S. and Russian science experiments. Dr. Pettit and the mission commander performed 2 EVAs (spacewalks) to continue the external outfitting of the orbital outpost. The Expedition-6 crew launched on STS-113 Space Shuttle Endeavour and returned to Earth on Soyuz TMA-1.
MAY 2003
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