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Profiles of Shuttle Columbia's Crew
Sat February 1, 2003 02:46 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Here are brief profiles of the crew of Space Shuttle Columbia.
Shuttle Commander Rick Douglas Husband, a U.S. Air Force colonel and former test pilot, was on his second shuttle mission, having flown previously in 1999 aboard shuttle Discovery.

Born July 12, 1957, in Amarillo, Texas, and married with two children, Husband joined the astronaut program in 1994 and worked as chief of safety for NASA's Astronaut Office.

His previous shuttle voyage was a 10-day mission that docked with the International Space Station and delivered supplies in preparation for the arrival of the first crew to live aboard the orbiting outpost.

He piloted that flight, logging 235 hours, 13 minutes in space.

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Shuttle Pilot William C. McCool, a U.S. Navy commander, was on his first shuttle voyage aboard Columbia, but had wide experience as a military aircraft pilot with more than 2,800 hours of flight experience in 24 aircraft.

A test pilot at the Strike Aircraft Test Directorate at Patuxent River, Maryland, McCool managed projects ranging from airframe fatigue life studies to avionics upgrades. He acted as test pilot of the EA-6B Prowler, a radar-jamming warplane.

His primary efforts, however, were dedicated to dedicated to flight test of the Advanced Capability (ADVCAP) EA-6B.

Married, McCool was born Sept. 23, 1961, in San Diego, California.

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Shuttle Payload Commander Michael Anderson, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, was responsible for science hardware aboard Columbia.

Anderson joined the astronaut corps in 1994 and previously flew aboard shuttle Endeavour in 1998, the eighth docking mission between a space shuttle and the Soviet-made Mir spacecraft. Anderson logged over 211 hours in space on that voyage.

Born in Plattsburgh, New York, on Dec. 25, 1959, Anderson counted Spokane, Washington, as his hometown. He was married.

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Ilan Ramon, an Israeli Air Force colonel, was the first Israeli to go into space. At 48, he was a veteran of Israel's Yom Kippur War and the son of a Holocaust survivor from the Auschwitz concentration camp. In memory of family members who died under Nazi rule during the World War II, Ramon took with him a pencil drawing by a Czech Jewish boy.

Ramon logged more than 3,000 flight hours on the Israeli A-4, Mirage III-C, and F-4, and more than 1,000 flight hours on the F-16.

Selected by NASA as a payload specialist in 1997, Ramon began training in July 1998. Born June 20, 1954, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Ramon was married with four children.

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Laurel Blair Clark, a U.S. Navy commander and a physician, was on her first NASA shuttle voyage.

An avid scuba diver, Clark did active duty training with the Diving Medicine Department at the Naval Experimental Diving Unit during medical school. During a later assignment in Scotland, she dove with U.S. Navy divers and Naval Special Warfare Unit Two Seals and performed numerous medical evacuations from U.S. submarines. She was designated a Naval Submarine Medical Office and Diving Medical Officer. and a Naval Flight Surgeon.

Selected for the astronaut corps in 1996, Clark was married with one child. She was born in Iowa but called Racine, Wisconsin, her hometown. Her birth date was not immediately available.

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David Brown, a U.S. Navy captain and surgeon, was a gymnast who performed as an acrobat, unicyclist and stilt walker while attending college.

Brown joined the Navy after his medical internship, and after completing flight surgeon training in 1984, became director of medical services at the Navy Branch Hospital in Adak, Alaska.

Brown logged more than 2,700 flight hours with 1,700 in high performance military aircraft. The Columbia mission was his first space flight. He joined the astronaut program in 1996.

Born April 16, 1956, in Arlington, Virginia, Brown was unmarried.

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Kalpana Chawla, an aerospace engineer and commercial pilot, was on her second space shuttle flight, having been a mission specialist in 1996, logging more than 376 hours in space.

Born in Karnal, India, she studied in the United States, and received her doctorate from the University of Colorado.

She started working for NASA in 1988, studying powered-lift computational fluid dynamics. Her research concentrated on simulation of complex air flows encountered around aircraft.

Chawla joined the astronaut program in 1994.