Jerome III "Jay" Apt, Ph.D. (born
April 28,
1949 in
Massachusetts) is an
American astronaut. Before he became an astronaut, Apt was a physicist who worked on the
Venus space probe project. Apt graduated from
Shady Side Academy and
Harvard College. He earned a Ph.D. in Physics from
MIT in 1976. He joined
NASA in 1980 as a research scientist, and in
1986 became an astronaut. He has flown on four space missions and has logged over 847 hours in space. In 1991, Apt flew aboard
shuttle Atlantis where he made a
spacewalk, where, along with
Jerry Ross, he manually deployed the
Gamma Ray Observatory's radio antenna when it failed to do so automatically. In 1992, he flew aboard
shuttle Endeavour and performed
life science experiments. In 1994, Apt was part of the first Space Radar Laboratory. This lab studied the
Earth. In 1996, Apt flew aboard
shuttle Atlantis and visited the Russian
Mir space station.
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