Crippen, Robert

Robert Crippen, in full Robert Laurel Crippen, (born September 11, 1937, Beaumont, Texas, U.S.), U.S. astronaut who served as pilot on the first space shuttle orbital flight.

Crippen graduated from the University of Texas, Austin, with a degree in aerospace engineering in 1960. He entered the U.S. Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory program in 1966 and transferred to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s astronaut corps in 1969. He was named commander of the Skylab Medical Experiments Altitude Test several years later and was a member of the support crews for Skylab 2, 3, and 4 and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

Witness the liftoff and landing of Columbia, the first shuttle to reach space, crewed by astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen, 1981See all videos for this article

Crewed by Crippen and John W. Young, the shuttle Columbia, the world’s first reusable spacecraft, was launched on April 12, 1981. The two astronauts landed the airplanelike craft on April 14, after having orbited Earth 36 times. Crippen later commanded the second flight of the space shuttle Challenger. This flight (June 18–24, 1983) included the first American woman in space, Sally Ride, and made Crippen the first to fly in two shuttle missions.

In 1984 he commanded two more shuttle flights. STS-41-C (Challenger, April 6–13, 1984) was the first mission in which a satellite, the malfunctioning Solar Maximum Mission, was repaired in Earth orbit. He then commanded STS-41-G (Challenger, October 5–13, 1984), which was the first spaceflight with a seven-person crew and during which astronaut Kathryn Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space.

From 1984 Crippen was a NASA administrator, during which time he was director of the space shuttle program (1990–92) and then director of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida (1992–95). After leaving the space program, he worked in private aerospace companies until his retirement in 2001.