Linnehan

Dr. Richard M. Linnehan, visiting assistant professor of aquatic, wildlife and zoo medicine at NC State, made his third trip into space on Thursday, Feb. 28, when space shuttle Columbia lifted off from launch pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The 11-day mission took seven astronauts on a voyage to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

Astronauts replaced Hubble's solar arrays, power switching station and one of four primary pointing devices. They also installed a powerful new optical instrument called the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which will provide astronomers with about 10 times the discovery capability of the current Hubble camera. Additionally, the crew installed an experimental cooling system and radiator on an important infrared instrument that has been dormant since 1999.

Linnehan walked in space for the first time, joining three others who worked in alternating pairs. The groups performed five planned spacewalks to upgrade the telescope's scientific capabilities and power system. Linnehan’s previous space shuttle missions focused on life science experiments that measured microgravity and its effects on the brain and nervous system. Linnehan has been an astronaut since 1992 and an NC State faculty member since 1997.

A native of Lowell, Mass. Linnehan Graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 1980 with a bachelor of science degree in Animal Sciences with a minor in Microbiology. Received the degree of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine in 1985.

After graduating from The Ohio State Linnehan entered private veterinary practice and was later accepted to a 2-year joint internship in zoo animal medicine and comparative pathology at the Baltimore Zoo and The Johns Hopkins University. After completing his internship Linnehan was commissioned as a Captain in the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps in 1989 at the Naval Ocean Systems Center in San Diego as chief clinical veterinarian for the U.S. Navy’s Marine Mammal Program. During his assignment at the center Linnehan initiated and supervised research in the areas of cetacean and pinniped anesthesia, orthopedics, drug pharmacokinetics and reproduction in direct support of U.S. Navy mobile marine mammal systems stationed in California, Florida, and Hawaii.

He is a member of the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Association of Zoo Veterinarians and the International Association of Aquatic Animal Medicine.

For more information on the mission, check the Web at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/index.html.