News Story

With NASA’s Space Shuttle program now ended, a Kansan who flew on five of the flights will reflect on the legacy of the program in a public lecture at Pittsburg State University.

Dr. Steven Alan Hawley will present “The engineering, scientific and cultural legacy of the Space Shuttle” at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 8, in Room 102 Yates Hall. Hawley’s presentation is part of the 2012 Physics, Mathematics and Engineering Lecture Series and is open to the public.

Hawley is retired from NASA and now serves as a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas. He was one of the first class of astronauts selected specifically for the Shuttle in 1978.  He flew as a crewmember on five missions, including the deployment of both the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Hawley also had positions in flight operations management and astronaut selection during his 30-year NASA career.

Between 1981 and 2011, five Space Shuttles flew 135 missions. Shuttle Atlantis completed the final mission last July.

For more information, contact Dr. Tim Flood, chairman of the Department of Mathematics at 620-235-4401.