Charles Walker
BS aeronautical and astronautical engineering ’71
Born: 1948
Missions: STS-41-D, 51-D, 61-B
While an employee of the McDonnell Douglas Corp., Charles Walker was confirmed by NASA in 1983 as the first industry commercial astronaut to fly aboard the space shuttle. He participated in three shuttle missions, accumulating 20 days in space and traveling 8.2 million miles.
Charles Walker NASA Bio
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Walker accompanied McDonnell Douglas’ continuous-flow electrophoresis (CFES) equipment as a crew member on space shuttle missions 41-D, 51-D and 61-B. In addition to operating the complex CFES device – a device he helped develop and has a patent for – Walker performed early protein crystal growth experiments and participated as a test subject in numerous medical studies.
A Purdue alumnus joined Walker aboard two of his three shuttle missions. Fellow Boilermaker Donald Williams piloted space shuttle Discovery on STS-51-D, while Jerry Ross was a mission specialist aboard Atlantis for STS-61-B.
Walker served as chief test engineer and payload specialist for McDonnell Douglas’ EOS commercialization project from 1979-86. Among his responsibilities was training astronaut crews to operate the CFES payload for four missions before taking over those responsibilities himself. Walker was also involved in payload preparation and on-pad processing activities at Kennedy Space Center and in-flight support at the Mission Control Center in Houston.
