Stephen Gerard "Steve" Bowen (born February 13, 1964) is a

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

submarine A submarine (often shortened to sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. (It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability.) The term "submarine" is also sometimes used historically or infor ...

r and a

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...

; he was the second submariner to travel into space. Bowen has been on four

spaceflight Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly objects, usually spacecraft, into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such ...

s, the first three of which were

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable launch system, reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. ...

missions to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

. His first mission,

STS-126 STS-126 was the one hundred and twenty-fourth NASA Space Shuttle mission, and twenty-second orbital flight of the ''Space Shuttle Endeavour'' (OV-105) to the International Space Station (ISS). The purpose of the mission, referred to as ULF2 by ...

, took place in November 2008, and his second was

STS-132 STS-132 ( ISS assembly flight ULF4) was a NASA Space Shuttle mission, during which Space Shuttle ''Atlantis'' docked with the International Space Station on May 16, 2010. STS-132 was launched from the Kennedy Space Center on May 14, 2010. The pri ...

in May 2010. His third was

STS-133 STS-133 (Assembly of the International Space Station#Assembly sequence, ISS assembly flight ULF5) was the 133rd mission in NASA's Space Shuttle program; during the mission, Space Shuttle Discovery, Space Shuttle ''Discovery'' docked with the Int ...

in February 2011, and his fourth was

SpaceX Crew-6 SpaceX Crew-6 was the sixth crewed operational NASA Commercial Crew flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft, and the ninth overall crewed orbital flight. The mission launched on 2 March 2023 at 05:34:14UTC, and it successfully docked to the Interna ...

in March 2023. In March 2011, Bowen completed his third spaceflight as a mission specialist on

, which was Space Shuttle ''Discovery'''s final planned flight. Having flown on both STS-132 and STS-133, he became the first and only astronaut to fly on consecutive shuttle missions. Originally

Tim Kopra Timothy Lennart "Tim" Kopra (born April 9, 1963) is an American engineer, a Colonel in the United States Army, and a retired NASA astronaut. He served aboard the International Space Station as a flight engineer for Expedition 20, returning to Ear ...

was scheduled to fly on STS-133, but had a bicycle injury shortly before the mission, and so he was replaced by Bowen. On December 16, 2021, NASA assigned Bowen as commander of

mission to the ISS, launched in March 2023.

Personal life and early education

Bowen resides in

Friendswood, Texas Friendswood is a city in the U.S. state of Texas. It is part of the Greater Houston metropolitan area. The city lies in Galveston and Harris counties. As of the 2020 census, the population of Friendswood was 41,213. History Friendswood, s ...

. He is married to Deborah Alden; they have three children. He graduated from

Cohasset High School Cohasset High School is a public high school located in Cohasset, Massachusetts, United States. It is located at 143 Pond St. and has an enrollment of 431 students in grades 9-12. A majority of the school's teams are named the "Skippers" and the ...

Cohasset, Massachusetts Cohasset is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census the population was 8,381. History Cohasset was inhabited by the Pokanoket until 1649, when it was conquered by the Wampanoag, ...

in 1982, received a B.S. in

Electrical Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

from the

United States Naval Academy The United States Naval Academy (USNA, Navy, or Annapolis) is a United States Service academies, federal service academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It was established on 10 October 1845 during the tenure of George Bancroft as United States Secre ...

in 1986 and received an M.S. in

Ocean Engineering Marine engineering is the engineering of boats, ships, submarines, and any other marine vessel. Here it is also taken to include the engineering of other ocean systems and structures – referred to in certain academic and professional circ ...

from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

in 1993. He is a member of

Tau Beta Pi The Tau Beta Pi Association (commonly Tau Beta Pi, , or TBP) is the oldest engineering honor society and the second oldest collegiate honor society in the United States. It honors engineering students in American universities who have shown a ...

Phi Kappa Phi The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi (or simply Phi Kappa Phi or ) is an honor society established in 1897 to recognize and encourage superior scholarship without restriction as to the area of study, and to promote the "unity and democracy of educa ...

and

Sigma Pi Sigma Sigma Pi Sigma () is an American honor society for physics and astronomy. It was founded at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina on December 11, 1921. It is the oldest and only American honor society for physics and astronomy. It is an or ...

. In his spare time, Stephen Bowen has also had connections with the organisation ISSET, through him being the resident astronaut during a few of their

Mission Discovery Mission Discovery is an international education program run for teenagers in many countries around the world. The programme started in 2011 in King's College London, England, and has since expanded to Australia, the US, India and other countries ...

programs. Here he shares his experiences with students as well as try to teach them new skills and influence them to maybe follow a career in the sciences.

Military career

Upon completion of the submarine training pipeline, Bowen spent three years attached to and completed qualification in submarines on . After attending the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Ocean Engineering he reported to for duty as the Engineering Officer. During this tour, he qualified for command of nuclear powered submarines. In 1997, he reported to the

United States Special Operations Command The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM or SOCOM) is the unified combatant command charged with overseeing the various special operations component commands of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force of the United States A ...

(USSOCOM) in the Office of Plans and Policy and worked on the USSOCOM Future Concepts Working Group. For nine months in 1999, he was the Reactor and Propulsion inspector for the Navy's Submarine Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV). In May 2000 he became the first Executive Officer of the Pre-Commissioning Unit , the first of the new s.

NASA career

Bowen is the first Submarine Officer selected by NASA. He was selected as an astronaut candidate in July 2000, as one of NASA's Astronaut Group 18. He reported for training at the Johnson Space Center in August 2000. Following the completion of two years of training and evaluation, he was initially assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Station Operations Branch while awaiting assignment to a Shuttle flight as a

mission specialist Mission specialist (MS) is a term for a specific position held by astronauts who are tasked with conducting a range of scientific, medical, or engineering experiments during a spaceflight mission. These specialists were usually assigned to a s ...

. Bowen was originally assigned to

STS-124 STS-124 was the 35th mission of Space Shuttle ''Discovery''. It went to the International Space Station on this mission. ''Discovery'' launched on May 31, 2008, at 17:02 EDT, moved from an earlier scheduled launch date of May 25, 2008, and land ...

but was moved to a later flight to allow the Shuttle to rotate an ISS crew member. Iss018e009339

STS-126

Bowen was then assigned to the crew of

, aboard Space Shuttle ''Endeavour'', which launched November 14, 2008, to the

. STS-126 carried a reusable logistics module that held supplies and equipment, including additional crew quarters, exercise apparatus, equipment for the regenerative life support system, and spare hardware. During STS-126, Bowen participated in three

spacewalks Extravehicular activity (EVA) is any activity done by an astronaut in outer space outside a spacecraft. In the absence of a breathable atmosphere of Earth, Earthlike atmosphere, the astronaut is completely reliant on a space suit for environme ...

, for a total time of 19 hours, 56 minutes.

STS-132

Bowen's next mission was

, aboard Space Shuttle ''Atlantis'', which launched on May 14, 2010, to the ISS. While docked to the station, Bowen conducted two spacewalks and logged 14 hours and 34 minutes of EVA time.

STS-133

On January 19, 2011, Bowen was named as the replacement for Timothy L. Kopra on

. Kopra was injured in a bicycle accident, preventing him from flying on the mission. With this mission, Bowen became the first and only astronaut to fly on consecutive Shuttle missions. George Nelson was the first astronaut to fly consecutive Space Shuttle missions in which the Shuttle landed successfully (

STS-61-C STS-61-C was the 24th mission of NASA's Space Shuttle program, and the seventh mission of Space Shuttle ''Columbia''. It was the first time that ''Columbia'', the first space-rated Space Shuttle orbiter to be constructed, had flown since STS-9 ...

and

STS-26 STS-26 was the 26th NASA Space Shuttle mission and the seventh flight of the orbiter ''Discovery''. The mission launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on September 29, 1988, and landed four days later on October 3, 1988. STS-26 was decla ...

), having the Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' disaster between his missions. Bowen conducted two spacewalks and logged 12 hours and 48 minutes of EVA time.

SpaceX Crew-6

On December 16, 2021, Bowen was named commander for NASA's SpaceX Crew-6. The flight lifted off on March 2, 2023 to the

, using Crew Dragon ''Endeavour''.

Awards and honors

Defense Meritorious Service Medal The Defense Meritorious Service Medal (DMSM) is an award bestowed upon members of the United States military by the United States Department of Defense. In the order of precedence of the United States Armed Forces, it is worn between the Purple ...

Navy Commendation Medal The Commendation Medal is a mid-level United States military decoration presented for sustained acts of heroism or meritorious service. Each branch of the United States Armed Forces issues its own version of the Commendation Medal, with a fift ...

s (3) *

Navy Achievement Medal The Achievement Medal is a military decoration of the United States Armed Forces. The Achievement Medal was first proposed as a means to recognize outstanding achievement or meritorious service of military personnel who were not eligible to rece ...

s (2)

References

External links

Spacefacts biography of Stephen G. Bowen
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bowen, Stephen 1964 births Living people United States Navy astronauts People from Cohasset, Massachusetts United States Naval Academy alumni MIT School of Engineering alumni United States Navy officers United States submarine commanders Space Shuttle program astronauts Cohasset High School alumni Crew members of the International Space Station Spacewalkers Military personnel from Massachusetts SpaceX astronauts