Sidney M. Gutierrez

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Sidney M. Gutierrez : biography

June 27, 1951 –

He has logged over 4,500 hours flying time in approximately 30 different types of airplanes, sailplanes, balloons, and rockets.

His Early life

Gutierrez was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Married to the former Marianne Sue Cremer of Jefferson City, Missouri. They have three children: two daughters and a son. His recreational interests include camping, woodworking, and racquetball.

Gutierrez graduated from Valley High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1969. He then received his Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering from the United States Air Force Academy in 1973 and a Master of Arts degree in management from Webster University in 1977.

Space flight experience

STS-40 Spacelab Life Sciences (SLS-1), a dedicated space and life sciences mission, which launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on June 5, 1991. SLS-1 was a nine-day mission during which the crew performed experiments which explored how humans, animals, and cells respond to microgravity and re-adapt to Earth’s gravity on return. Other payloads included experiments designed to investigate materials science, plant biology and cosmic radiation. Following 146 orbits of the Earth, Columbia and her crew returned to land at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on June 14, 1991. Mission duration was 218 hours, 14 minutes, 20 seconds.

STS-59 Space Radar Laboratory (SRL-1), part of Mission to Planet Earth, was an eleven-day flight dedicated to the study of the Earth and the atmosphere around it. The two primary payloads were the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR), and Measurement of Air Pollution from Space (MAPS). The crew completed over 400 precise maneuvers (a Shuttle record) to properly point the radar, imaged over 400 selected sites with approximately 14,000 photographs (a Shuttle record) and recorded enough data to fill 26,000 encyclopedias. Areas of investigation included ecology, oceanography, geology, and hydrology. Launching on April 9, 1994, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Endeavour and her crew of six completed 183 orbits of the Earth before landing at Edwards AFB, California, on April 20, 1994.