Michael A. Stecker
 masmd@sbcglobal.net
 

Donald R. Pettit, Ph.D.
Johnson Space Center
Houston, Texas
U.S.A.

Contact information
website
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/home/index.html
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Locator Map
http://www.frappr.com/apppublic
Level of accuracy: city of Houston, Texas

Biography
I am an American astronaut and a veteran of a six month stay aboard the International Space Station.  I am married with two children
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I was born (1955) and raised in Silverton, Oregon.  After graduating from Silverton Union High School, I earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from Oregon State University in 1978 and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona in 1983.  After graduate school I worked as a staff scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory where I worked on reduced gravity fluid flow and materials processing experiments on board the NASA KC-135 airplane, atmospheric spectroscopy on noctilucent clouds seeded from sounding rockets, fumarole gas sampling from volcanoes, and problems in detonation physics.  I was also was a member of the Synthesis Group, slated with assembling the technology to return to the moon and explore Mars (1990), and the Space Station Freedom Redesign Team (1993).

In 1996 I was selected as an astronaut candidate and after two years of training at the Johnson Space Center became a NASA Mission Specialist.  As an astronaut I participated in Expedition-6, Nov. 23, 2002 to May 3, 2003 and was NASA International Space Station (ISS) Science Officer aboard the International Space Station, logging over 161 days in space, including over 13 EVA hours. During 5-1/2 months aboard the International Space Station, the crew worked with numerous U.S. and Russian science experiments. Along with the mission commander Ken Bowersox we performed 2 EVAs (spacewalks) to continue the external outfitting of the orbital outpost. The Expedition-6 crew launched on STS-113 Space Shuttle Endeavour and returned to Earth on Soyuz TMA-1. While on the ISS I did most of the astro-imaging.
 

Future six month Mission: ISS Expedition 30
November, 2011

Cities At Night
by Donald Pettit from aboard the International Space Station
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Houston, Texas (cropped in fog) from International Space Station Expedition 6, 2002-2003
NASA Cities at Night Website
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Superb YouTube Video of cities from around the world:
YouTube Cities At Night Video narrated by Don Pettit

Don with barn-door tracker

ISS: Don photographing Africa in daylight

Amateur astronomy observations from space -- IPY, 2007-2008
Report by Donald Pettit (9.8 MB)
and
Don's expedition to Antarctica
http://www.humanedgetech.com/expedition/nasa/

Observing site
International Space Station
(approximate 250 miles above earth)

ISS: May, 2006

ISS005-E-21513 (26 November 2002) --- The Expedition Six crewmembers, wearing Russian Sokol suits, pose for a crew photo in the functional cargo block (FGB), or Zarya, on the International Space Station (ISS). Pictured are astronaut Donald R. Pettit (front), NASA ISS science officer; cosmonaut Nikolai M. Budarin (left back), flight engineer; and astronaut Kenneth D. Bowersox, mission commander.
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http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-6/ndxpage11.html
http://www.shuttlepresskit.com/STS-113/SPK_Expd-6.pdf

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