Joseph P. Allen
Joseph Percival Allen IV is an American physicist, scientist-astronaut, and former NASA astronaut. Selected in NASA Astronaut Group 6 in 1967, he represented the scientist-astronaut path that began before Skylab and carried into the early Shuttle era.
- Born
- June 27, 1937
- Died
- N/A
- Birthplace
- Crawfordsville, Indiana,United States
Flights
2
Spacewalks
2
EVA time
11 hours, 42 minutes
In space
13 days, 1 hour, 58 minutes
Bio
Allen trained as a physicist at DePauw University and Yale University before joining NASA. During Apollo, Skylab, and Shuttle development he worked in science, mission support, and astronaut office roles before his own flights.
He flew first on STS-5 in 1982, the first operational Space Shuttle mission. Allen served as as Columbia deployed commercial communications satellites and demonstrated that the shuttle could conduct practical payload operations.
His second flight, STS-51-A in 1984, became one of the shuttle's signature satellite-recovery missions. Allen and Dale Gardner performed to capture the stranded Palapa B2 and Westar 6 satellites so Discovery could return them to Earth.
After NASA, Allen moved into commercial space and aerospace leadership, including work connected to industrial space facilities. His career shows how scientist-astronauts became central to payload operations, satellite servicing, and the commercial ambitions of the shuttle era.