Jeffrey A. Hoffman - Space Flight Experience

Space Flight Experience

• STS 51-D (April 12–19, 1985)
• STS-35 (December 2–10, 1990)
• STS-46 (July 31 - August 8, 1992)
• STS-61 (December 2–13, 1993)
• STS-75 (February 22 - March 9, 1996)

Hoffman made his first space flight as a mission specialist on STS 51-D, April 12–19, 1985, on the Space Shuttle Discovery. On this mission, he made the first STS contingency spacewalk, in an attempted rescue of a malfunctioning satellite.

Hoffman made his second space flight as a mission specialist on STS-35, December 2–10, 1990, on the Space Shuttle Columbia. This Spacelab mission featured the ASTRO-1 ultraviolet astronomy laboratory, a project on which Dr. Hoffman had worked since 1982.

Hoffman made his third space flight as payload commander and mission specialist on STS-46, July 31-August 8, 1992, on the Space Shuttle Atlantis. On this mission, the crew deployed the European Retrievable Carrier (EURECA), an ESA-sponsored free-flying science platform, and carried out the first test flight of the Tethered Satellite System (TSS), a joint project between NASA and the Italian Space Agency. Hoffman had worked on the Tethered Satellite project since 1987.

Hoffman made his fourth flight as an EVA crewmember on STS-61, December 2–13, 1993, on the Space Shuttle Endeavour. During this flight, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was captured, serviced, and restored to full capacity through a record five space walks by four astronauts, including Hoffman. Dr. Hoffman also spun a dreidel for the holiday of Chanukah to a live audience watching via satellite watching what's known as Chanukah Live. (Video Courtesy of Chabad of the Space Coast)

Hoffman last flew on STS-75 (February 22 - March 9, 1996) on the Space Shuttle Columbia. This was a 16-day mission whose principal payloads were the reflight of the Tethered Satellite System (TSS) and the third flight of the United States Microgravity Payload (USMP-3). The TSS successfully demonstrated the ability of tethers to produce electricity. The TSS experiment produced a wealth of new information on the electrodynamics of tethers and plasma physics before the tether broke at 19.7 km, just shy of the 20.7 km goal. The crew also worked around the clock performing combustion experiments and research related to USMP-3 microgravity investigations. During this mission, Dr. Hoffman became the first astronaut to log 1000 hours aboard the Space Shuttle.

With the completion of his fifth space flight, Dr. Hoffman has logged more than 1,211 hours and 21.5 million miles in space.

Since 2002, he has been a Professor of the Practice in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Since 2008 he has also been a visiting Professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester.

He is the author of a book titled An Astronaut's Diary ISBN 978-0-936897-00-4 (June 1986) which is accompanied by a cassette tape. The audio tape contains excerpts of the original recordings he made with a pocket tape recorder.