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Stephen S. Oswald
The Shuttle Commander is Stephen S. Oswald. He earned his B.S. in
aerospace engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1973 and graduated from the
U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in 1978. He conducted flying qualities,
performance, and proplusion flight tests on the A-7 and F/A-18 aircraft. Upon
leaving active service, Oswald was a civilian test pilot for the Westinghouse
Electric Corporation before joining NASA in 1984 as an aerospace engineer and
instructor pilot. He was selected as an astronaut in 1985, and his assignments
since that time have included working with Marshall Space Flight Center on the
redesign of the Shuttle solid rocket motor and serving as Chief of the
Operations Development Branch of the Astronaut Office. He was the pilot of
STS-42, the First International Microgravity Laboratory, and of STS-56, the
Second Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science mission.