Science & invention
Gregory Jarvis
1944–1986 · engineer, astronaut
Detroit-born satellite engineer who died as a payload specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in January 1986.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Space Shuttle Challenger, off Cape Canaveral, Florida
aged 41- Birth name
- Gregory Bruce Jarvis
- Also known as
- Greg Jarvis
- Field
- Science & invention
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Jarvis was born in Detroit in 1944, but he grew up in upstate New York and graduated from high school in Mohawk, a village that later named its school after him. He earned degrees in electrical engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo and Northeastern University, served in the U.S. Air Force from 1969 to 1973, and then joined Hughes Aircraft, where he worked on communications satellites. In 1984 Hughes chose him as one of two employees to train as payload specialists for the Space Shuttle program. He was assigned to Challenger's flight STS-51-L to study how fluids behave in weightlessness, and he was among the seven crew members killed when the shuttle broke apart 73 seconds after launch on January 28, 1986.
Highlights
- Payload specialist for Hughes Aircraft on Space Shuttle mission STS-51-L
- Killed in the Challenger disaster, January 28, 1986
- Posthumous Congressional Space Medal of Honor
- Born in Detroit, 1944; raised in Mohawk, New York