Captain Pierre J. Thuot, U.S. Navy, Retired

CAPTAIN PIERRE J. THUOT,
U.S. NAVY, RETIRED

Pierre J. Thuot (pronounced THOO-it) was born May 19, 1955 in Groton, Connecticut, the son of a career Naval Officer. He graduated from Fairfax High School in Fairfax, Virginia in 1973 and graduated 30th in his class from the U. S. Naval Academy in 1977 with a Bachelor of Science in Physics. He received a Master of Science in Systems Management from the University of Southern California in 1985.

Thuot received his Naval Flight Officer wings in August 1978. Following training in the F-14A Tomcat, at Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia, he was assigned to Fighter Squadron 14 where he made overseas deployments to the Mediterranean and Caribbean Seas aboard the USS John F. Kennedy and USS Independence. While assigned to Fighter Squadron 14 he graduated from TOPGUN, the Navy Fighter Weapons School.

He was then selected to attend the U. S. Naval Test Pilot School located at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. Upon graduation in June 1983 he worked as a project test flight officer at the Naval Air Test Center flying the F-14A Tomcat, A-6E Intruder and the F-4J Phantom II. In June 1984 he returned to the U. S. Naval Test Pilot School as a flight instructor.

In June 1985, Thuot was selected by NASA as an Astronaut and commenced training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. While at NASA, he served in a variety of technical assignments participating in the design, development, and evaluation of space flight hardware and software.

Thuot is a veteran of three space flights, STS-36 in 1990, STS-49 in 1992, and STS-62 in 1994. On his first flight, he was a mission specialist on the crew of STS-36, a dedicated Department of Defense mission that launched on February 28, 1990, for a four and one half-day mission aboard the space shuttle Atlantis.

Thuot was a mission specialist on the crew of STS-49, the nine-day maiden voyage of the space shuttle Endeavour, which launched on May 7, 1992. During that mission, he performed three space walks that resulted in the capture and repair of the stranded Intelsat VI F3 commercial communications satellite. The third space walk was the first ever three-person space walk. This 8 hour and 29 minute space walk, the longest in history, broke a twenty-year-old record that was held by Apollo 17 astronauts.

On March 4, 1994, Thuot launched aboard Columbia on STS-62, for a fourteen-day micro-gravity science and technology demonstration mission. During that mission more than sixty experiments and investigations were conducted in many scientific and engineering disciplines including materials science, human physiology, biotechnology, protein crystal growth, robotics, structural dynamics, atmospheric ozone monitoring, and spacecraft glow.