Pierre J. Thuot

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Pierre Thuot
NASA astronaut
RankCaptain, USN
Time in space
27d 6h 51m
SelectionNASA Group 11 (1985)
MissionsSTS-36
STS-49
STS-62
Mission insignia
STS-36 logo STS-49 logo STS-62 logo

Pierre Joseph Thuot (

space walks
. He is a former U.S. record holder for time spent on one spacewalk, and participated in the first three-person spacewalk.

Personal life

Born on May 19, 1955, in Groton, Connecticut, Thuot considers Fairfax, Virginia and New Bedford, Massachusetts to be his hometowns. He is married to the former Cheryl Ann Mattingly of Leonardtown, Maryland, and they have two children. Thuot enjoys boating, golf, running, music, flying and family activities.[1]

Education

Thuot graduated from

Systems Management from the University of Southern California in 1985.[1] He attended Harvard Business School's six-week Advanced Management Program in 2004.[2]

Professional membership

Thuot is a member of the U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association, the Association of Naval Aviation, the University of Southern California Alumni Association, the Association of Space Explorers, the American Astronautical Society (AAS) and an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).[1]

Honors

He has been awarded three

Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, the AAS Flight Achievement Award and Victor A. Prather Award for 1993, three NASA Space Flight Medals, two NASA Exceptional Service Medals, and seven NASA Group Achievement Awards. He held the U.S. and absolute world records for total time spent on space walks: 8 hours and 29 minutes from 1992 until 2001.[1]

Flight experience

Thuot graduated 30th in his class from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1977 and commenced

F-4J Phantom II until June 1984 when he returned to the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School as a flight instructor.[1]

He has over 3,500 flight hours in more than 50 different aircraft, and has over 270 carrier landings.[1]

NASA career

The STS-49 three-person EVA. Left to right: Richard Hieb, Thomas Akers, Thuot.

Selected as an astronaut by NASA in June 1985, Thuot has served in a variety of technical assignments. As the remote manipulator system (robot arm), crew equipment, and extravehicular activity (EVA) representative for the Astronaut Office, he participated in the design, development and evaluation of

space walks. Thuot was the first member of NASA Astronaut Group 11
to fly a shuttle mission.

On his first flight, Thuot was a mission specialist on the crew of STS-36 which was launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on February 28, 1990, aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis. This mission carried Department of Defense payloads and a number of secondary payloads. Following 72 orbits of the Earth in 106 hours, the STS-36 mission concluded with a lakebed landing at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on March 4, 1990, after traveling 1.87 million miles.[3]

Thuot was a mission specialist on the crew of STS-49, the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which was launched from the Kennedy Space Center on May 7, 1992. During that mission, Thuot, along with astronaut Richard Hieb, performed three spacewalks which resulted in the capture and repair of the stranded Intelsat VI F3 communications satellite. The third spacewalk, which also included astronaut Thomas Akers, was the first-ever three-person spacewalk. This 8 hour and 29 minute spacewalk, the longest in history, broke a twenty-year-old record that was held by the Apollo 17 astronauts. The mission concluded on May 16, 1992, with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base after orbiting the Earth 141 times in 213 hours and traveling 3.7 million miles.[4]

On March 4, 1994, Thuot was launched aboard Space Shuttle Columbia on STS-62, a microgravity science and technology demonstration mission that carried the United States Microgravity Payload (USMP-2) and the Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology (OAST-2) payloads. More than sixty experiments or investigations were conducted in scientific and engineering disciplines including materials science, human physiology, biotechnology, protein crystal growth, robotics, structural dynamics, atmospheric ozone monitoring and spacecraft glow. During the spacecraft glow investigation, Columbia's orbital altitude was lowered to 105 nautical miles (194 km), the lowest ever flown by a Space Shuttle. STS-62, one of the longest Space Shuttle missions, concluded on March 18, 1994, with a landing at the Kennedy Space Center after orbiting the Earth 224 times in 13 days, 23 hours, and 16 minutes and traveling 5.8 million miles.[5]

With the completion of his third mission, Thuot has logged over 654 hours in space, including over 17.7 hours on three spacewalks.

Thuot left NASA in June 1995 and returned to active service with the Navy.

Post-Navy career

Thuot retired from the U.S. Navy in 1998 and took a job with Orbital Sciences Corporation as a vice president in the Dulles, Virginia-based firm's Space Systems Group. He is currently a Senior Systems Engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Thuot's NASA biography" (PDF). NASA. July 1995. Retrieved June 18, 2021.
  2. ^ a b "Colloquium Topic: The Power of Teamwork Knows No Limits – AKA Murphy's Law at Mach 25". Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. January 29, 2016. Retrieved January 13, 2023.
  3. ^ Ryba, Jeanne (23 November 2007). "STS-36". Mission Archives. NASA. Archived from the original on 6 May 2021. Retrieved 6 May 2021.
  4. ^ Ryba, Jeanne (2 April 2010). "STS-49". Mission Archives. NASA. Archived from the original on 6 May 2021. Retrieved 6 May 2021.
  5. ^ Ryba, Jeanne (1 April 2010). "STS-62". Mission Archives. NASA. Archived from the original on 6 May 2021. Retrieved 6 May 2021.