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Owen K. Garriott, one of the first scientists chosen to explore the cosmos and the first astronaut to operate an amateur radio station, died Monday at his home in Huntsville, Alaska. He was 88 years old.
His death was confirmed by his son Richard.
Dr. Garriott has flown in space twice. In 1973, he was the scientific pilot of Skylab 3, the record 59-day mission – more than double the duration of a previous flight – bound for Skylab, the first US space station.
He spent nearly 14 hours outside Skylab during three spacewalks, during which physiological and biomedical measurements were monitored to determine the body's response to long periods of time spent under reduced severity.
"We learned the importance of exercise," said Dr. Garriott. "If you have enough exercise, one to two hours a day, you will be back in as good a condition as when you left."
At one point, the Houston controllers were stunned to hear the voice of a woman reporting mission control to Skylab: "The boys did not have home-made meals at home for so long, I thought of bringing one. "Dr. Garriott He later revealed that the voice was that of his wife, which he had recorded from their home during a show private radio the night before.
He returned to space in 1983 on the tenth day Shuttle flight Columbia, carrying the Spacelab 1 module of the European Space Agency, on which a multinational team of scientists conducted research.
During this mission, Dr. Garriott operated the first amateur radio station from the space. He used his station's call sign, W5LFL, to communicate with about 250 ham operators, including his mother in Enid, Okla. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona; and King Hussein of Jordan.
Owen Kay Garriott was born November 22, 1930 in Enid of Owen Garriott, a wholesale distributor of oil and gas, and Mary Catherine (Mellick) Garriott. (His middle name is derived from his mother's name.)
He attributed his interest in astronomy to a teacher that he had in third grade.
"One of the things she had in her class was a record, a word for which I did not know what it meant in third grade, but it's a small device that contains a whole planetary system" , Dr. Garriott recalled in a interview with the Johnson Space Center in 2000.
"You are doing a hand-stroke at the time, and they're all spinning," he said. "I think," That's great, it's really what the solar system looks like. Fascinating & # 39. "
His father invited Owen to join him in taking classes for adult radio and Morse code. At the age of 15, he was a licensed amateur radio operator.
After obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Oklahoma in 1953, Mr. Garriott was an Electronics Officer with the Navy Destroyers. He received a master's degree in 1957 and a PhD in 1960 from Stanford University, both in electrical engineering.
In 1965, while teaching at Stanford, Mr. Garriott spoke to NASA on a whim – "in the same way as for another government job," he said later. He was one of the first six candidates accepted as scientific astronauts. He followed a year of training in the Air Force and earned his jet pilot qualification.
His marriage to Helen Walker in 1952 ended with a divorce. In addition to his son Richard, his survivors include three other children of this marriage, Randall, Robert and Linda Garriott; his wife, Evelyn (Long) Garriott; three stepchildren, Cindy Burcham, Bill Eyestone and Sandra Brooks; 12 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
At NASA, Dr. Garriott was Director of Science and Applications at the Johnson Space Center in the mid-1970s, where he was responsible for physical science research. He was the scientist of the space station project before retiring from NASA in 1986.
He was then Vice President of Space Engineering at Teledyne Brown Engineering, who worked on the Spacelab projects of the Marshall Space Flight Center and on the development of the International Space Station laboratory.
Dr. Garriott wrote "Introduction to Ionospheric Physics" (1969) with Henry Rishbeth and, along with David Hitt and fellow astronaut Joseph Kerwin, "Homesteading Space: The Story of Skylab" (2008).
At the end of his life, Dr. Garriott taught at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and conducted research in extreme environments, ranging from Antarctica to hot springs. deep waters. He crowned a career in which he said that he never bored, even when he was in the void of space.
"Anyone who lacks things to do must have a failure in his imagination, block it somewhere," he said. "Because there is nothing else, you can look out the window, which would absolutely fascinate me for weeks."
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