August 24, 1999

Dwayne Brown
NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
(Phone: 202/358-1726)

Doug Peterson
Johnson Space Center, Houston
(Phone: 281/483-5111)

Release: J99-35

Astronaut Winston Scott Leaves NASA

After traveling over ten million miles in space, NASA Astronaut Winston E. Scott (Captain, USN) retired from NASA and the U.S. Navy at the end of July to accept a position at his alma mater, Florida State University, as Vice President for Student Affairs.

Selected as an astronaut in 1992, Scott is one of nine NASA African American astronauts who’ve flown in space. He served as a mission specialist on STS-72 in 1996 and STS-87 in 1997, and logged a total of 24 days, 14 hours and 34 minutes in space. He took three spacewalks totaling 19 hours and 26 minutes during the missions to support technical planning for the International Space Station and to capture, by hand, the Spartan satellite.

On STS-72 Scott participated in an almost seven-hour spacewalk from the orbiter Endeavour to test tools and procedures for use in the assembly and maintenance of the International Space Station. The spacewalk included riding the end of the robot arm to evaluate spacesuit resistance to the bitter cold of space.

During Scott’s second mission, STS-87 on the Columbia, he and fellow crewmember, Takao Doi, captured the Spartan science satellite during a nearly eight-hour spacewalk. In his two spacewalks on this mission, Scott was able to complete significant testing of EVA techniques and tools for assembling the International Space Station and check out a free-flying video camera. -MORE- -2-

Prior to becoming an astronaut, Scott accumulated more than 4,000 hours of flight time in 20 different military and civilian aircraft with more than 200 shipboard landings. He began his military aviation career as a Naval Aviator in August 1974 with an initial 4-year tour of duty flying the SH-2F Light Airborne Multi-Purpose System (LAMPS) helicopter. After completing jet training in the TA-4J Skyhawk, he flew the F-14 Tomcat in a Navy fighter squadron. Scott flew the F/A-18 Hornet and the A-7 Corsair aircraft as a production test pilot; and the F-14, F/A-18 and A-7 aircraft as a research and development project pilot.

Scott earned a master of science degree in aeronautical engineering with avionics at the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, California and served as an associate instructor of electrical engineering at Florida A&M University and Florida Community College at Jacksonville, Florida.

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