FRANK CULBERTSON
Frank Culbertson was born on May 15, 1949 in Charleston, South Carolina but considers Holly Hill to be his hometown. Flying in space has been a lifelong dream for Culbertson ever since President Kennedy gave Americans the challenge to going to the moon. In total he has fulfilled that dream by logging over 6,000 hours flying time in 40 different types of aircraft, and 350 carrier landings. A veteran of three space flights, Culbertson has logged over 146 days in space, including 129 of those days living and working aboard the International Space Station where he was in command for 117 days.

Culbertson graduated from Holly Hill High School, Holly Hill, South Carolina, in 1967; and was then accepted into the U.S. Naval Academy where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering in 1971. After graduating from Annapolis, Culbertson served aboard the USS until May 1981 when he was selected to attend the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland. Following graduation with distinction in June 1982, he was assigned to the Carrier Systems Branch of the Strike Aircraft Test Directorate where he served as Program Manager for all F-4 testing and as a test pilot for automatic carrier landing system tests and carrier suitability. He was engaged in fleet replacement training in the F-14A Tomcat at VF-101, NAS Oceana, Virginia, from January 1984 until his selection for the astronaut candidate program.

Selected as a NASA astronaut in 1984, Culbertson has successfully completed three space shuttle flights. His first space shuttle mission, STS-38 in 1990 was a classified Department of Defense mission. Following this mission, he served as the Deputy Chief of the Flight Crew Operations Space Station Support Office and lead astronaut for Space Station Safety. He was also a member of the team evaluating the hardware and procedures for the proposed mission to dock with the Russian Space Station Mir.

His next mission was STS-51 (1993), a ten-day shuttle mission during which the crew deployed two satellites and conducted many U.S. and German scientific experiments. Following STS-51, Culbertson was Chief of the Astronaut Office Mission Support Branch; then Chief of the Johnson Space Center Russian Projects Office. In 1994, Culbertson was named Deputy Program Manager, Phase 1 Shuttle-Mir, and in 1995 became Manager of the Shuttle-Mir Program. He was responsible for a multi-national team which executed nine Shuttle docking missions to the Russian Space Station Mir, with seven astronauts spending 30 months cumulatively on-board the Mir Station, plus all the associated science and docking hardware to ensure the success of the joint program, a precursor to the building of the joint International Space Station.

Prior to retiring from NASA in 2002, Culbertson was selected as a member of the Expedition 3 crew in which he spent 129 days conducting experiments aboard the International Space Station. Frank lives in Houston, TX and is pursuing new opportunities in the private sector.