Michael Smith
NASA astronaut
Died when: 40 years 273 days (488 months)Star Sign: Taurus
.jpg?width=300)
Michael John Smith (April 30, 1945 – January 28, 1986), (Capt USN) was an American engineer and astronaut.He served as the pilot of the Space Shuttle Challenger when it was destroyed during the STS-51-L mission, when it broke up 73 seconds into the flight, and at an altitude of 48,000 feet (14.6 km), killing all 7 crew members.
Smith's voice was the last one heard on the Challenger voice recorder.During his Naval career, Smith flew 28 different types of civilian and military aircraft and logged 4,867 hours of flying time.
Following the Challenger disaster, he was promoted posthumously by Congress to the rank of captain, and has had a chair named in his honor at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California.
Related People
.jpg?width=300)
This content was extracted from Wikipedia and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License