Thomas D. Jones

Thomas David Jones (born January 22, 1955) is a former United States astronaut. He was selected to the astronaut corps in 1990 and completed four Space Shuttle flights before retiring in 2001. He flew on STS-59 and STS-68 in 1994, STS-80 in 1996, and STS-98 in 2001. His total mission time was 53 days 48 minutes. He works as a planetary scientist, space operations consultant, astronaut speaker, and author. Jones was born January 22, 1955, in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from Kenwood High School, Essex, Maryland, in 1973; received a Bachelor of Science degree in Basic Sciences from the United States Air Force Academy in 1977, and a Doctorate in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona in 1988. Jones is a Distinguished Eagle Scout. A Distinguished Graduate of the USAF Academy, Jones served on active duty as an Air Force officer for 6 years. After pilot training in Oklahoma, he flew strategic bombers at Carswell Air Force Base, Texas. As pilot and aircraft commander of a B-52 D Stratofortress, he led a combat crew of six, accumulating over 2,000 hours of jet experience before resigning as a captain in 1983. From 1983 to 1988, Jones worked toward a Ph.D. at the University of Arizona in Tucson. His research interests included the remote sensing of asteroids, meteorite spectroscopy, and applications of space resources. From 1989 to 1990, he was a program management engineer in Washington, D.C., at the CIA's Office of Development and Engineering. In 1990 he joined Science Applications International Corporation in Washington, D.C. as a senior scientist. Jones performed advanced program planning for NASA's Solar System Exploration Division, investigating future robotic missions to Mars, asteroids, and the outer Solar System. After a year of training following his selection by NASA in January 1990, Jones became an astronaut in July 1991. In 1994 he flew as a mission specialist on successive flights of . First, in April 1994, he ran science operations on the "night shift" during STS-59, the first flight of the Space Radar Laboratory (SRL-1).