RICK SEARFOSS
Throughout his career as an astronaut, test pilot, and fighter pilot, Rick Searfoss
has logged over 5,000 flying hours in 60 different types of aircraft and nearly
1,000 hours in space. His personal leadership and team experiences in the space
program have given Searfoss the opportunity to share the vision and wonder of
space flight with groups of all ages while at the same time providing pertinent
down to earth lessons.
Searfoss was the number one graduate in his U.S. Air Force Academy and Air Force Squadron Officer School and earned a graduate degree from the California Institute of Technology, which he attended on a National Science Foundation fellowship. He was selected for Outstanding Young Men of America and is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Air Force Topgun School and Naval Test Pilot School. It was during his tour as a USAF exchange officer at the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School that Searfoss was selected into the astronaut program.
A veteran of three space flights, Searfoss has logged over 39 days in space. He served as pilot on STS-58 and STS-76, and was the mission commander on STS-90.
His first mission aboard STS-58 expanded our knowledge of human and animal physiology both on earth and in space flight. Searfoss flew his second mission as pilot of STS-76. During this 9-day mission the STS-76 crew performed the third docking of an American spacecraft with the Russian space station Mir. This included the first ever spacewalk on a combined Space Shuttle-Space Station complex.
During Searfossís last mission, he commanded a seven-person crew aboard STS-90. During the 16-day Neurolab mission the crew focused on the effects of microgravity on the brain and nervous system. STS-90 was the last and most complex of the twenty-five Spacelab missions NASA has ever flown. This mission began paving the future possibility of long duration human space flights.
Searfoss retired from the Air Force and left NASA in 1998 and currently tours the world sharing the wonders of human space flight and the relevant lessons learned.