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Robert Parker, NASA astronaut

NEWLN: United Press International

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When Robert Parker was selected as an astronaut, Lyndon Johnson was president, the war in Vietnam was escalating and the Apollo moon program had yet to get off the ground.

An astronomer by training, Parker waited 16 years for his first flight in 1983 and seven more for his second this week aboard the shuttle Columbia when he finally will be able to put his; s cleared for another launch try this week.

But for Parker, 53, the wait has been worth it.

'Astronomy is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the space program,' he said in an interview before the May launch attempt. 'The ozone layer protects us very nicely from those ultraviolet rays but we astronomers would just as soon put on our solar screen and go outside and observe all the other energies the atmosphere screens out for us.'

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The goal of Columbia's 'Astro-1' mission is to study X-rays and UV radiation from deep space that is blocked by Earth's atmosphere.

'Every time we've looked into one of these new regions of the spectrum, we found things we didn't expect,' he said. 'No one expected galaxies to be radiating radio waves.

'We will go into one region of the spectrum that has not been explored at all, and that is the far ultraviolet. We don't know what we can expect to see there. We've never really flown a significant amount of ultraviolet imaging in space before.'

Data from Columbia's mission, coupled with that from the Hubble Space Telescope and other orbital observatories, promise to revolutionize modern astronomy. But Parker said it is 'nonsense' to expect too much.

'Astronomers have been thinking they were going to find the answer to the expanding universe ever since they went out and got money for the 200-inch (Mount Palomar) telescope,' he said. 'Well that didn't answer it. I don't knowso aboard Columbia, Parker said he sought the job as a spaceman because he decided it might be a 'fun way to live.' While he waited 16 years for his first taste of space, he had plenty to do on Earth.

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'It's been an exciting 16 years. All of us would like to have flown more, sooner and more often. But I never was to the point of thinking 'Gee, I'm not going to get to fly.' There was always something you were working on,' Parker said.

'I would go so far as to say even if I never flew, the excitement, the challenge and the fun of having been down here and gone through these things that very few people have been able to do is reward enough.'

Parker was a member of the astronaut support crews for the Apollo 15 and 17 moon landing missions and served as program scientist for the Skylab program director's office during the three manned Skylab flights.

He began preparing for his 1983 shuttle flight in 1975, the same year his current commander, Vance Brand, blasted off on his first mission, a joint U.S.-Soviet orbital linkup called the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

Prior to his selection to the astronaut corps in 1967, Parker, of Shrewsbury, Mass., was an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin.

'I never thought of being an astronaut. We did not have such things very much in those days and I really never was big on Buck Rogers,' he said.

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'I was happily teaching astronomy, which is what I expected to do all my life. My father was a physics professor and I had gotten a Ph.D.mnology in 1962.

He married the former Judy Woodruff of San Marino, Calif. They have five children and five grandchildren.

In his limited spare time, Parker's favorite hobby is horseback riding at a dude ranch in Durango, Colo.

'By now I must have a part ownership. I go up there and ride horses once or twice a year.'

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