Jack R. Lousma
Jack R. Lousma, selected in NASA Astronaut Group 5 in 1966, served as the pilot on the Skylab 3 mission and the commander of the third shuttle test flight, STS-3.
Quick FActs
Lousma logged over 1,619 hours in space and orbited Earth 858 times during the Skylab 3 mission.
Lousma, on duty for his shift as a capsule communicator (CAPCOM) in Mission Control for Apollo 13, answered the call from Jack Swigert when he declared, “Okay Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”
Lousma and fellow Skylab 3 astronaut Owen K. Garriott conducted a record-breaking (at the time) 6-hour 31-minute extravehicular activity (EVA) in 1973.
Biography
Jack R. Lousma
Lousma earned a degree in aeronautical engineering at the University of Michigan, where he also played football. Selected in 1966 as a member of NASA’s Astronaut Group 5, he supported the Apollo Program for several years before traveling to space for the first time as the pilot for Skylab 3. Lousma’s NASA career continued into the Space Shuttle era. As commander of the STS-3 mission, he and pilot C. Gordon Fullerton became the first astronauts to use a space shuttle’s robotic arm (Canadarm) to move a payload in space.
Read His Biography about Jack R. Lousma
Skylab 3
The second crew to inhabit Skylab, launched on July 28, 1973, spent a then record-breaking 59.5 days in space. The mission accomplished 150% of their mission goals while completing 858…
Learn More About Skylab 3
Oral History Interviews with Jack Lousma
March 7, 2001
Learn more about Jack Lousma's early years, his selection as a NASA astronaut and experiences with the Apollo and Skylab programs in this transcript from a March 7, 2001 interview undertaken as part of the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project.
March 15, 2010
In this 2010 interview, Lousma speaks about being on the backup crew for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the unflown Skylab rescue flight, the early days of the Space Shuttle Program and his STS-3 flight.
