Samuel Durrance, who as an astronomer was one in all the primary non-career astronauts to fly with NASA after the lack of space shuttle Challenger, has died on the age of 79.
Durrance’s death on Friday (May 5) (opens in recent tab) got here as results of complications from a fall, as reported (opens in recent tab) by the Astro Restoration Project, a volunteer-driven effort to preserve the astronomical hardware that Durrance helped design and use in space.
“Sam died quietly today surrounded by family after a protracted struggle with dementia and Parkinson’s disease. He had spent his final days in hospice care at a facility in Viera, Florida,” his family said. “A real scientist to the tip and beyond, Sam asked that his body be donated to support the continuing medical research related to astronauts who’ve flown in space.”
Durrance was chosen to coach and fly as a payload specialist as a result of his work as a co-investigator for the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope, one in all the instruments originally slated to launch with the STS-61E crew on the space shuttle Columbia in March 1986. The Challenger tragedy, though, delayed the flight, and Durrance finally lifted off on Dec. 2, 1990.
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Together along with his six (re-designated) STS-35 crewmates, including Vance Brand, a veteran of the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and fellow astronomer-turned-payload specialist Ron Parise (opens in recent tab), Durrance spent nearly nine days in orbit conducting round the clock observations using the 4 Astro-1 telescopes (opens in recent tab) that were mounted on a Spacelab pallet in Columbia’s payload bay.
The crew experienced some problems pointing the telescopes at their planned targets but were in a position to conduct 231 observations of 130 celestial objects over a 143-hour period, achieving about 70% of the mission’s objectives.
Durrance and his crewmates also needed to take care of a difficulty with their waste water disposal in consequence of a blocked valve, as he recalled in a temporary interview in 2013.
“We were an all-male crew and we had tried [prior to launch] to get contingency urine devices for females taken off the manifest so we could save weight for that, but they [NASA] said it could cost an excessive amount of to vary,” said Durrance as a part of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex’s “Tell Me A Story” video series.
“It actually turned out we would have liked them, because the best way that we stored the waste water on board was that we built a tool that would inject the waste water into these diapers, essentially, that were for the females that weren’t getting used, so we had a solution to try this,” he added.
“It was not an excessive amount of fun, rerouting the plumbing, but it surely worked, and we were in a position to complete the mission,” Durrance said. Columbia landed on Dec. 11, 1990 at Edwards Air Force Base in southern California.
Durrance flew again five years later with Astro-2, the second Spacelab mission dedicated to astronomical observations. The Astro-2 instruments were designed to capture twice as much astronomical data within the ultraviolet as that they had on Astro-1.
Lifting off on the space shuttle Endeavour on March 2, 1995, Durrance and his six STS-67 crewmates (including Parise, who had been aboard STS-35) again devoted most of their time to conducting continuous observations of the universe using a trio of telescopes.
“When it comes to the science we’re doing, now we have observed many, many objects,” said Durrance as a part of an interview conducted through the mission. “Now we have observed over 100 astronomical objects. We’re observing within the ultraviolet. We’re observing stars, galaxies and searching on the ultraviolet light that comes from them, which does not reach the surface of Earth. So we’re learning rather a lot concerning the universe that we didn’t know before.”
“I believe that is an incredible accomplishment,” he said. “The shuttle system is an incredible piece of technology, and I believe America ought to be happy with it.”
Endeavour landed on March 18, 1995, at Edwards Air Force Base, after 16 days and 15 hours in space. Over the course of his two spaceflights, Durrance logged a complete of 25 days, 14 hours and 13 minutes, while completing greater than 400 orbits of Earth.
Samuel Thornton Durrance was born on Sept. 17, 1943, in Tallahassee, Florida, but he considered Tampa his hometown. He received a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Science degree in physics from California State University, Los Angeles in 1972 and 1974, respectively, and a doctorate in astro-geophysics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1980.
Durrance was working as a research scientist within the department of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore when he volunteered to change into a payload specialist. Prior to training with NASA’s astronaut corps and flying into space himself, Durrance made observations of Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus using the International Ultraviolet Explorer and helped develop special pointing techniques needed to watch solar system objects using that orbiting observatory.
Along with his role within the design, construction and integration of the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope, Durrance designed and built spectrometers, detectors and imaging systems, in addition to made quite a few spacecraft and ground-based observations. At Johns Hopkins, he led a team that designed and constructed an instrument that led to the primary unambiguous detection of a cool brown dwarf star.
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After his second spaceflight, Durrance served because the director of science and technology for Final Evaluation, Inc., helping to develop a program to fly scientific instruments on the corporate’s planned low Earth orbit communications satellite constellation. Durrance then served as an associate professor on the University of Central Florida and as director of the Florida Space Grant Consortium.
In 2001, Durrance became the chief director of the Florida Space Research Institute, leading the event of space-related research and academic programs for the state. Five years later and thru his retirement as a result of illness, Durrance taught and led research on the Florida Institute of Technology, specializing in planetary science and human space exploration. His areas of study included the hazards related to long-term exposure to the space environment, lunar dust physics and detecting life on exoplanets.
Durrance also joined the Industrial Spaceflight Federation’s (CSF) Suborbital Applications Researchers Group and have become director of the Sub-Orbital Research and Training Center, the latter utilizing flights of F-104 “Starfighter” jets from the Launch and Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center to prototype spaceflight hardware for NASA and business firms, in addition to to develop an imaging system designed specifically for imaging Earth’s coastal regions.
Durrance was a lifetime member of the Association of Space Explorers, a not-for-profit organization for worldwide astronauts and cosmonauts, which counted him in its “Registry of Space Travelers” because the 243rd person to fly into space and 236th to enter orbit. He ceaselessly made public appearances as a part of Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex’s every day Astronaut Encounter program.
Durrance was married to Rebecca “Becky” Ann (nee Tuggle) with whom he had two children, Ben and Susan.
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