Byron K. Lichtenberg
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Byron K. Lichtenberg, Sc. D.
Payload Specialist
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Personal data
Born February 19, 1948 in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Married with 5 children, 2 adopted Chinese daughters. He is a U.S. citizen.
Education
- Sc.B., aerospace engineering, Brown University (1969)
- S.M., mechanical engineering, MIT (1975)
- Sc.D., biomedical engineering, MIT (1979)
- Sc.D., Westminster College (honorary)
Awards
- NASA Space Flight Medal (2)
- AIAA Haley Space Flight Award
- FAI Komorov Award.
Organizations
Founding Member:
- Association of Space Explorers
- X-Prize Foundation
- International Space University
Member:
- User Panel for National Space Biomedical Research Institute
- Tau Beta Pi (honorary engineering society)
- Sigma Xi (honorary scientific society).
Experience
From 1978 to 1984 he was a Research the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)/Canadian Vestibular experiments on Spacelab 1, Spacelab D-1, Spacelab SLS-1 and SLS-2, and a Co-principal investigator for the Mental Workload and Performance experiment flown on IML-1 to assess human-computer workstation characteristics for the Space Station.
He was a Founder of Payload Systems, Inc., a company that has provided hardware and flight support for MODE and MACE experiments for the Space Shuttle and ISS. They also were the first commercial user of the Mir Space Station, flying protein crystal growth experiments to Mir in the early 1990s. He is now President of Zero Gravity Corporation, founded to make parabolic, weightless aircraft flights available to the general public. He was an Air Force fighter pilot for 23 years, flying the F-4, F-100, and A-10. Survived 238 combat missions during the Vietnam War, and received 2 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 10 Air Medals, and numerous other decorations. Currently flies as a Captain for a major Airline.
Space flight experience
Lichtenberg was the first Payload specialist. He flew on Spacelab-1 (STS-9) mission (10 days in 1983), conducted multiple experiments in life sciences, materials sciences, Earth observations, astronomy and solar physics, upper atmosphere and plasma physics. His second flight was ATLAS-1 (STS-45) Spacelab mission (9 days in 1992); conducted 13 experiments in Atmospheric sciences and astronomy. He has flown 310 orbits, and has logged 468 hours in space.
OCTOBER 2002
Source [1] (http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/lichtenberg-bk.html)