STS-35 payload specialist Samuel Durrance "balances" atop fellow payload specialist Ron Parise's finger on space shuttle Columbia's middeck in December 1990. "We were an all-male crew and we had tried to get contingency urine devices for females taken off the manifest so we could save weight for that, but they said it would cost too much to change," said Durrance as part of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex's "Tell Me A Story" video series. The crew experienced some problems pointing the telescopes at their planned targets but were able to conduct 231 observations of 130 celestial objects over a 143-hour period, achieving about 70% of the mission's objectives.ĭurrance and his crewmates also had to deal with an issue with their waste water disposal as a result of a blocked valve, as he recalled in a brief interview in 2013. Together 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, Durrance spent nearly nine days in orbit conducting round-the-clock observations using the four Astro-1 telescopes that were mounted on a Spacelab pallet in Columbia's payload bay. NASA portrait of STS-35 payload specialist Sam Durrance. The Challenger tragedy, though, delayed the flight, and Durrance finally lifted off on Dec. "A true scientist to the end and beyond, Sam asked that his body be donated to support the ongoing medical research associated with astronauts who have flown in space."ĭurrance was chosen to train and fly as a payload specialist due to his work as a co-investigator for the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope, one of the instruments originally slated to launch with the STS-61E crew on the space shuttle Columbia in March 1986. He had spent his final days in hospice care at a facility in Viera, Florida," his family said. "Sam died quietly today surrounded by family after a long struggle with dementia and Parkinson's disease. Samuel Durrance, who as an astronomer was one of the first non-career astronauts to fly with NASA after the loss of space shuttle Challenger, has died at the age of 79.ĭurrance's death on Friday (May 5) came as result of complications from a fall, as reported by the Astro Restoration Project, a volunteer-driven effort to preserve the astronomical hardware that Durrance helped design and use in space.
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