Lousma Credit - www.spacefacts.de Media Gallery

Personal: Male, Married, Four children. Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA.

Astronaut Career

Astronaut Group: NASA Group 5 - 1966. Inactive Entered space service: 4 April 1966. Left space service: 1 October 1983. Number of Flights: 2.00. Total Time: 67.47 days. Number of EVAs: 2.00. Total EVA Time: 0.46 days.

NAME: Jack R. Lousma

BIRTHDATE AND PLACE: Lousma was born February 29, 1936, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

EDUCATION: Lousma received a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Michigan in 1959 and a degree of aeronautical engineer from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1965.

EXPERIENCE: Lousma became a Marine Corps officer in 1959 and received his flight wings a year later at the U.S. Naval Air Training Command. He served with the 2nd Marine Air Wing as an attack pilot and with the 1st Marine Wing based in Japan. He was a reconnaissance pilot with the 2nd Marine Air Wing, flying out of Cherry Point, North Carolina, when NASA selected him as one of 19 new astronauts in April 1966.

Lousma served as Command Module Pilot for the second manned Skylab mission, Skylab 3, launched on July 28, 1973. The other crew members were Commander Alan Bean and Science Pilot Owen K. Garriott. They would spend 59 days aboard the space workshop. Lousma conducted two space walks during the mission. On the tenth day of the mission, he and Garriott conducted an EVA, replacing film in the external solar telescope and erecting a second sun shade over the area of the station where a protective heat shield had ripped away during launch. On the second EVA, with Garriott, the telescope film was again changed out. During the course of the mission Earth resources photography, solar astronomy, metals processing and biological experiments were conducted.

Lousma returned to space March 22, 1982, as Commander of the third flight of the Space Shuttle. During eight days in orbit, he and Pilot Gordon Fullerton exposed the shuttle to extremes in thermal stress, tested the craft's 16 m long robot arm, and conducted science experiments. Because of bad weather at the prime landing site at Edwards Air Force Base, California, Lousma flew the shuttle to its only landing at a high altitude backup landing site at White Sands, New Mexico, on March 30.

Thereafter Lousma retired from NASA and the Marine Corps, and became an official of The Diamond General Corporation.

• 28 July 1973 Flight: Skylab 3. Flight Up: Skylab 3. Flight Back: Skylab 3. Flight Time: 59.46 days.

• 22 March 1982 Flight: STS-3. Flight Up: STS-3. Flight Back: STS-3. Flight Time: 8.00 days.

4 April 1966 - NASA Astronaut Training Group 5 selected.. The group was selected to provide pilot-astronauts for the Apollo Applications Program (then planned as 10 lunar landings after Apollo 11 and 30 Apollo flights to earth-orbit space stations).. Qualifications: Qualified jet pilot with minimum 1,000 flight-hours, bachleor's degree in engineering or physical or biological sciences, under 35 years old, under 183 cm height, excellent health. US citizen.. 351 applications (including six women and a legless US Navy pilot). All 19, except X-15 astronaut Engle, would fly into space on Apollo or Skylab missions. Engle and six others would fly shuttle missions.

At 8:13 p.m. EST a 217-second S-IVB auxiliary propulsion system burn aimed the S-IVB for a lunar target point so accurately that another burn was not required. The S-IVB/IU impacted the lunar surface at 8:10 p.m. EST on April 14 at a speed of 259 meters per second. Impact was 137.1 kilometers from the Apollo 12 seismometer. The seismic signal generated by the impact lasted 3 hours 20 minutes and was so strong that a ground command was necessary to reduce seismometer gain and keep the recording on the scale. The suprathermal ion detector experiment, also deployed by the Apollo 12 crew, recorded a jump in the number of ions from zero at the time of impact up to 2,500 shortly thereafter and then back to a zero count. Scientists theorized that ionization had been produced by 6,300 K to 10,300 K (6,000 degrees C to 10,000 degrees C) temperature generated by the impact or that particles had reached an altitude of 60 kilometers from the lunar surface and had been ionized by sunlight.

Meanwhile back in the CSM/LM, the crew had been performing the routine housekeeping duties associated with the period of the translunar coast. At 30:40 ground elapsed time a midcourse correction maneuver took the spacecraft off a free-return trajectory in order to control the arrival time at the moon. Ensuring proper lighting conditions at the landing site. The maneuver placed the spacecraft on the desired trajectory, on which the closest approach to the moon would be 114.9 kilometers.

At 10:08 p.m. EST April 13, the crew reported an undervoltage alarm on the CSM main bus B, rapid loss of pressure in SM oxygen tank No. 2, and dropping current in fuel cells 1 and 3 to a zero reading. The loss of oxygen and primary power in the service module required an immediate abort of the mission. The astronauts powered up the LM, powered down the CSM, and used the LM systems for power and life support. The first maneuver following the abort decision was made with the descent propulsion system to place the spacecraft back in a free-return trajectory around the moon. After the spacecraft swung around the moon, another maneuver reduced the coast time back to earth and moved the landing point from the Indian Ocean to the South Pacific.

The space vehicle, consisting of a modified Apollo command and service module payload on a Saturn IB launch vehicle, was inserted into a 231.3 by 154.7 km orbit. Rendezvous maneuvers were performed during the first five orbits as planned. During the rendezvous, the CSM reaction control system forward firing engine oxidizer valve leaked. The quad was isolated. Station-keeping with the Saturn Workshop began approximately 8 hours after liftoff, with docking being performed about 30 minutes later.

After being docked for nearly 44 hours, Apollo and Soyuz parted for the first time and were station-keeping at a range of 50 meters. The Apollo crew placed its craft between Soyuz and the sun so that the diameter of the service module formed a disk which blocked out the sun. This artificial solar eclipse, as viewed from Soyuz, permitted photography of the solar corona. After this experiment Apollo moved towards Soyuz for the second docking.

Three hours later Apollo and Soyuz undocked for the second and final time. The spacecraft moved to a 40 m station-keeping distance so that the ultraviolet absorption (UVA MA-059) experiment could be performed. This was an effort to more precisely determine the quantities of atomic oxygen and atomic nitrogen existing at such altitudes. Apollo, flying out of plane around Soyuz, projected monochromatic laser-like beams of light to retro-reflectors mounted on Soyuz. On the 150-meter phase of the experiment, light from a Soyuz port led to a misalignment of the spectrometer, but on the 500-meter pass excellent data were received; on the 1,000-meter pass satisfactory results were also obtained.

With all the joint flight activities completed, the ships went on their separate ways. On 20 July the Apollo crew conducted earth observation, experiments in the multipurpose furnace (MA-010), extreme ultraviolet surveying (MA-083), crystal growth (MA-085), and helium glow (MA-088). On 21 July Soyuz 19 landed safely in Kazakhstan. Apollo continued in orbit on 22-23 July to conduct 23 independent experiments - including a doppler tracking experiment (MA-089) and geodynamics experiment (MA-128) designed to verify which of two techniques would be best suited for studying plate tectonics from earth orbit.

After donning their space suits, the crew vented the command module tunnel and jettisoned the docking module. The docking module would continue on its way until it re-entered the earth's atmosphere and burned up in August 1975.