Owen Kay Garriott

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Owen Kay Garriott bigraphy, stories - A former NASA astronaut, a doctor of philosophy

Owen Kay Garriott : biography

22 November 1930 –

Owen finished school in his native city in 1948, after that he continued his education and got a bachelor’s degree of electrical engendering in 1953 in Oklahoma University. In 1957 he became a holder of a master’s degree of the same sphere in Stanford University. Three years after he protected his dissertation in Stanford and became a doctor. Later he was involved in research in physics sphere, studying ionosphere. He wrote more than 45 scientific articles and reports and also one book.

In 1966 Garriott got qualification of a pilot of a jet aircraft, having finished a one-year program of training in air forces of the USA. By that time he was already a member of the group of six scientists-astronauts, who were to form the fourth intake of NASA astronauts. On 28 July 1973 Owen Garriott went to outer space for the first time. He worked there as a scientists and spent 60 days on orbital station “Skylab”, making a record of time spent in space, because it was twice longer than the previous record. Garriott made a lot of research work, making study of Sun and Earth resources. He also made experiments of human adaptation to weightlessness.

The second and the last Garriett’s flight to space took place on 28 November 1983. The astronaut was on station till 8 December 1983. Garriott worked as a scientist on shuttle “Columbia”, which was making its flight according to STS-9 program. While performing the program, they made more than seventy experiments for different disciplines, mostly in order to prove that “Skylab” laboratory was suitable for scientific research. Owen Garriott made several sessions of radio broadcast for the first time in astronautic history (the call sign was W5LFL).

Garriott’s career of an astronaut could continue, but the catastrophe which happened with Challenge made an obstacle. Flights of shuttles were stopped for several years.

Since 1984 till 1986 Garriott took part in a NASA project in order to create an orbital station. However, in 1986 Garriott quit astronautics and founded his own business.

Publications

Introduction to Ionospheric Physics