STS-59

Sidney M. Gutierrez

• Birthday: 06/27/1951
• Role: Commander
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 06/05/1991
• Last Flight: 04/09/1994

Sidney McNeill Gutierrez is a former NASA astronaut.

Kevin P. Chilton

• Birthday: 11/03/1954
• Role: Pilot
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 05/07/1992
• Last Flight: 03/22/1996

Kevin Patrick “Chilli” Chilton is an American mechanical engineer, and former United States Air Force four-star General and test pilot. His last assignment was as Commander, U.S. Strategic Command from October 3, 2007 to January 28, 2011. Prior to his appointment to general officer ranks, Chilton spent 11 years of his military career as a NASA astronaut. He retired from the Air Force on February 1, 2011, after having achieved the highest rank of any military astronaut. On January 30, 2012, General Chilton was named to the board of directors of Orbital Sciences Corporation.

Michael R. Clifford

• Birthday: 10/13/1952
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 12/02/1992
• Last Flight: 03/22/1996

Michael Richard Uram “Rich” Clifford is a former United States Army officer and NASA astronaut. Clifford is considered a Master Army Aviator and has logged over 3,400 hours flying in a wide variety of fixed and rotary winged aircraft. Clifford retired from the U.S. Army at the rank of lieutenant colonel. He has logged over 12 hours of spacewalk time over three Space Shuttle missions. He is also one of the first people to conduct a spacewalk while docked to an orbiting space station. The spacewalk was conducted during STS-76, while docked at the Russian space station Mir.

Jerome Apt

• Birthday: 04/28/1949
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 04/05/1991
• Last Flight: 09/16/1996

Jerome “Jay” Apt III, Ph.D. (born April 28, 1949 in Massachusetts) is an American astronaut and professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Before he became an astronaut, Apt was a physicist who worked on the Pioneer Venus 1978 space probe project, and used visible light and infrared techniques to study the planets and moons of the solar system from ground-based observatories.

Linda M. Godwin

• Birthday: 07/02/1952
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 04/05/1991
• Last Flight: 12/05/2001

Linda Maxine Godwin Ph.D. is an American scientist and retired NASA astronaut. Godwin joined NASA in 1980 and became an astronaut in July 1986. She retired in 2010. During her career, Godwin completed four space flights and logged over 38 days in space. Godwin also served as the Assistant to the Director for Exploration, Flight Crew Operations Directorate at the Johnson Space Center. Since retiring from NASA, she accepted the position of Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Missouri.

Thomas David Jones

• Birthday: 01/22/1955
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 04/09/1994
• Last Flight: 02/07/2001

Thomas David Jones is a former United States astronaut. He was selected to the astronaut corps in 1990 and completed four space shuttle flights before retiring in 2001. He flew on STS-59 and STS-68 in 1994, STS-80 in 1996 and STS-98 in 2001. His total mission time was 53 days 48 minutes. He works as a planetary scientist, space operations consultant, astronaut speaker, and author.

STS-59

• Type: Earth Science
• Orbit: Low Earth Orbit
• Launch Cost: $450,000,000

STS-59 Shuttle mission was a Space Shuttle program mission that took place in 1994. The launch was chronicled by the 1994 Discovery Channel special about the Space Shuttle Program.

Launch Complex 39A

Kennedy Space Center, FL, USA

Launch Complex 39A has witnessed the launch of 174 rockets, including 173 orbital launch attempts, while Kennedy Space Center, FL, USA, has been the site for 232 rocket launches.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration Space Shuttle

The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program name was Space Transportation System (STS). Five complete Space Shuttle orbiter vehicles were built and flown on a total of 135 missions from 1981 to 2011.