Terry J. Hart

Terry Jonathan Hart had been working at Bell Telephone Laboratories as a member of the technical staff when NASA chose him for astronaut training in 1978. Born in Pittsburgh in 1946, he earned a bachelor’s degree at Lehigh University in 1968, a master’s degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a second master’s degree at Rutgers. Hart served at the Johnson Space Center in Houston from 1978–84, during which time he was capsule commentator (the broadcast “voice of mission control”) for four missions of the space shuttle Columbia. In 1984, he gained fame on a mission aboard the space shuttle Challenger when he used a robot arm to manipulate a disabled satellite into the ship’s cargo bay. When Hart received the Rutgers Medal, he presented to the university a pennant he had carried on his space flight. From 1989–92, he was chair of The Rutgers Fund. He is also a recipient of the New Jersey Distinguished Service Medal, the NASA Space Flight Medal, and the Pride of Pennsylvania Medal. In 2004, Hart retired as president of LORAL Skynet, a leading satellite communications services provider, then went on to teach aircraft design and performance at Lehigh University.