Loren Acton, Date of Birth, Place of Birth

    

Loren Acton

astronaut

Date of Birth: 07-Mar-1936

Place of Birth: Lewistown, Montana, United States

Profession: astronaut, physicist, university teacher

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Pisces


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About Loren Acton

  • Loren Wilber Acton (born March 7, 1936) is an American physicist who flew on Space Shuttle mission STS-51-F as a Payload Specialist for the Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory. Acton was born in Lewistown, Montana.
  • He went on to receive a bachelor of science degree in Engineering Physics from Montana State University in 1959, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Astro-Geophysics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1965. Acton was a senior staff scientist with the Space Sciences Laboratory, Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory, California.
  • As a research scientist, his principal duties included conducting scientific studies of the Sun and other celestial objects using advanced space instruments and serving as a co-investigator on one of the Spacelab 2 solar experiments, the Solar Optical Universal Polarimeter.
  • He was selected as one of four payload specialists for Spacelab 2 on August 9, 1978, and after seven years of training he flew on STS-51-F/ Spacelab-2 in 1985.
  • At mission conclusion, Acton had travelled over 2.8 million miles in 126 Earth orbits, logging over 190 hours in space. Acton is married and has two children.
  • In 2006 he ran in an election to be the state representative of Montana's District 69, as a Democratic candidate.
  • In the event, he lost to the Republican incumbent, Jack M.
  • Wells of Belgrade.Acton is currently a retired Research Professor of Physics at Montana State University, where he was responsible for the formation of the Solar Physics group and the Space Science and Engineering Laboratory.
  • The MSU solar group carries on an active research program under NASA and NSF support and is actively involved in day-to-day operation and scientific utilization of satellite missions for studies of the Sun.
  • Acton was a principal investigator for Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT) experiment on the Japan/US/UK Yohkoh mission "Yohkoh Legacy Archive".
  • The Yohkoh mission focused on the study of high-energy solar processes, such as solar flares, eruptions and the heating of the corona.
  • The primary emission of the extremely hot outer atmosphere of the sun, the solar corona, is at X-ray wavelengths.
  • The extended duration, high resolution, X-ray imagery from Yohkoh contribute to the study of why the sun has a corona at all and why it varies in intensity so strongly in response to the 11-year sunspot cycle.

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