| astronautix.com | Wang |
NAME: Dr. Taylor G. Wang
BIRTHPLACE AND DATE: Dr. Wang was born on June 16, 1940, in Shanghai, China. He later moved to Taipei, Taiwan, and then attended college in the United States at UCLA. He became a citizen of the United States in 1975.
EDUCATION: University of California, Los Angeles: Ph.D. Physics 1971; M.S. Physics 1968; B.S. Physics 1967.
EXPERIENCE: Following graduation from UCLA, Dr. Wang was at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1972 to 1988.
In June of 1983, Dr. Wang was selected by NASA to train as an astronaut-scientist for Spacelab-3, a research facility flown in the cargo bay of the space shuttle. In 1985, Dr. Wang flew aboard the Challenger as part of a seven member crew on the successful STS-51 mission (April 29 - May 5). During the flight, Dr. Wang studied the dynamic behavior of rotating spheroids in zero gravity in an experimental facility which he designed called the Drop Dynamics Module (DDM).
Dr. Wang was then the Principal Investigator for research projects involving drop and bubble dynamics, collision and coalescence of drops, charged drop dynamics, containerless science, and encapsulation of living cells. One of Dr. Wang's experiments was flown during the summer of 1992 (June 25 - July 8) as part of the first shuttle mission dedicated solely to microgravity studies, the United States Microgravity Laboratory 1 (USML-1). Another experiment was flown aboard USML-2 during the fall of 1995 (October 20 - November 4).
Dr. Wang was the holder of over 20 US patents and the author of approximately 180 articles in open literature.
Manned seven crew. Deployed Nusat; carried Spacelab 3. Payloads: Spacelab-3 experiments, habitable Spacelab and mission peculiar experiment support structure. The experiments represented a total of five different disciplines: materials processing in space, environmental observa-tions, life science, astrophysics, and technology experiments. Two getaway specials (GAS). The flight crew was split into gold and silver shifts working 12-hour days during the flight.