Astronaut Steven Hawley, who earned his Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC in 1977, has been inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame. Hawley flew on five space shuttle missions and now serves as director of astromaterials research and exploration science at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
Among Hawley's accomplishments as an astronaut was the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990 and a return mission to service the telescope in 1997. He also served on the 1999 flight that deployed the third of NASA's "Great Observatories," the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Altogether, Hawley logged 770 hours in orbit. He was one of three astronauts inducted into the Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the Kennedy Space Center on May 5.
An earlier story about Hawley, including a video clip from an interview with him, is available here.
