(CNN) -- Having logged more than 10 million miles in space, astronaut Winston Scott has retired from NASA and the U.S. Navy and taken a job at his alma mater of Florida State University as vice president for student affairs.

The former Naval captain was selected as an astronaut in 1992. One of nine African Americans to have flown in space with NASA, Scott retired from the space agency and the military last month.

He was a mission specialist on shuttle missions in 1996 and 1997, logging a total of 24 days, 14 hours and 34 minutes in space. He took three spacewalks during missions to support technical planning for the International Space Station and to capture the Spartan satellite by hand.

Before becoming an astronaut, he put in more than 4,000 hours of flight time in 20 different military and civilian aircraft with more than 200 shipboard landings.

Scott's military career started in 1974 with a four-year tour of duty flying the SH-2F Light Airborne Multi-Purpose System (LAMPS) helicopter for the Navy.

He flew the F-14 Tomcat in a Navy fighter squadron and the F/A-18 Hornet and A-7 Corsair aircraft as a production pilot. He also flew the F-14, F/A-18 and A-7 aircraft as a research and development project pilot.

Scott has a master's degree in aeronautical engineering with avionics from the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, California, and has taught electrical engineering at Florida A&M University and Florida Community College at Jacksonville, Florida.

Return to Top

NASA selects Ball Aerospace for 2 spacecraft

(CNN) -- NASA has awarded a $500 million contract to Boulder-based Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. to build two spacecraft that will fly in formation for a mission to peer telescopically beyond the Milky Way.

The Space Technology 3 mission will combine data from the separate sun-orbiting spacecraft to create a virtual large telescope peering out further than either single satellite could alone.

The coordinated use of more than one telescope to generate sharper, more penetrating views of space is called interferometry. Space interferometry saves money because it is simpler to launch two small spacecraft or telescopes than one large spacecraft or larger-lens telescope.

The mission, set to launch in early 2005 on a Delta 2 rocket, is part of NASA's New Millennium Program, which tests new technologies quickly and cheaply so they can be used with more confidence on later missions.

After launch, the spacecraft will undergo calibration tests before separating to fly in formation and conduct telescope experiments. The mission is expected to last six months.

Ball Aerospace will develop and build the spacecraft and test its systems. The University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics will oversee its flight operations.

Return to Top

Want more? Go to previous In Brief

LATEST HEADLINES:

Back to the top