Biography

Loren Acton was born on March 7, 1936 in Lewiston, Montana, USA.

Received a bachelor of science degree from Montana State University in 1959, and a doctor of philosophy from the University of Colorado in 1965.

Senior staff scientist with the Space Sciences Laboratory, Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory, California. He conducted scientific studies of the Sun and other celestial objects using advanced space instruments and served as a co-investigator on one of the Spacelab 2 solar experiments, the Solar Optical Universal Polarimeter.

In 1985, he was a payload specialist on STS-51F/ Spacelab-2. At mission conclusion, Dr. Acton had traveled over 2.8 million miles in 126 Earth orbits, logging over 190 hours in space.

Married with two children.