Loren Wilber Acton

Loren Wilber Acton is an American physicist who flew on Space Shuttle mission STS-51-F as a Payload Specialist for the Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory. Acton was born in Lewistown, Montana. He received a bachelor of science degree in Engineering Physics from Montana State University in 1959, and a Doctor of Philosophy in astrophysics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1965. Acton was a senior staff scientist with the Space Sciences Laboratory, Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory, California. As a research scientist, his principal duties included conducting scientific studies of the Sun and other celestial objects using advanced space instruments and serving as a co-investigator on one of the Spacelab 2 solar experiments, the Solar Optical Universal Polarimeter. At mission conclusion, Acton had travelled over 2.8 million miles in 126 Earth orbits, logging over 190 hours in space. Acton is currently a retired Research Professor of Physics at Montana State University, where he was responsible for the formation of the Solar Physics group and the Space Science and Engineering Laboratory.