Donald Roy PETTIT

NASA Astronaut

DATA AND PLACE OF BIRTH: April 20, 1955, Silverton, Oregon.

EDUCATION: Graduated from Silverton Union High School, Silverton, Oregon, in 1973; received a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from Oregon State University in 1978; and a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona in 1983.

FAMILY STATUS: married to Michell R. Racheph. They have two children.

HOBBIES: Photography and swimming.

WORK EXPERIENCE: Staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico from 1984-1996. Projects included reduced gravity fluid flow and materials processing experiments on board the NASA KC-135 airplane, atmospheric spectroscopy measurements on noctolucent clouds seeded from sounding rockets, volcano fumarole gas sampling on active volcanos, and problems in detonation physics applied to weapon systems. He was a member of the group that studied the technology needed to return to the moon and explore Mars (1990), and the Space Station Freedom Redesign Team (1993).
Selected by NASA in April 1996, he reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1996. Having completed two years of training, he is a qualified mission specialist. He was assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Computer Support Branch. Initially assigned as a backup crewmember, he has been assigned to the crew of Expedition-6.
On March 23, 2001 he was assigned to the backup crew of Expedition 6 (ISS-6). From April 2001 to July 2002 he passed training as a crewmember.
Pettit performed his first space flight from November 24, 2002 to May 4, 2003 as a flight engineer of ISS-6 crew. During the flight he performed two EVAs of the total duration of 13 hours 17 minutes. The mission duration was 161 days 1 hr 14 min 38 s.
In December 2003 he was assigned to the backup crew of Expedition 11 (ISS-11), however already in January he was rotated by Daniel Tani.
In late October 2007 it was reported that he was assigned as a mission specialist to the crew of shuttle (STS-126). This message was officially reported by NASA on November 22, 2007 in press release No. 07-259.
Pettit performed his second space flight from November 15 to December 1, 2008 as a mission specialist of Endevour under STS-126 program. The main objective of the mission was the ISS resupply using MPLP Leonardo cargo module, performance of the ISS maintenance operations on the external surface of the American Segment, rotation of flight engineer-2 onboard the ISS. The mission duration was 15 days 20 hr 29 min 27 s.
In July 2009 it was reported about his possible assignment to the prime crew of Expedition 30 (ISS-30). On October 7, 2009 his assignment was confirmed by NASA (press release No. 09-233).

On May 12-13, 2011 Donald Pettit together with Oleg Kononenko and Andre Kuipers successfully passed the examination training on the simulator of the ISS Russian Segment and Launch Site. On May 16, 2011 he was approved by Interdepartmental Commission as the Soyuz TMA-02M backup crew flight engineer. On May 23, 2011 his assignment was confirmed at the meeting of the Federal Space Agency board.
On June 7, 2011 Donald Pettit was the spacecraft flight engineer backup.

December 2011
Based on materials of Lindon B. Johnson Space Center, NASA, USA
and site www.astronaut.ru.