Sturckow, Frederick Wilford (1961– )

In the cockpit of a T-38 trainer, US astronaut Frederick Sturckow prepares for a flight from Ellington Field near the Johnson Space Center. Sturckow piloted the space shuttle Discovery on STS-105.

US astronaut. He flew with the first International Space Station (ISS) assembly mission in December 1998, on board the space shuttle Endeavour. In August 2001, he flew on the Discovery mission to deliver the third resident crew to the ISS. He was assigned as crew commander of a 2004 flight that was postponed after the Columbia tragedy the previous year. He became deputy of the Shuttle Operations Branch in the Astronaut Office and leads the Kennedy Space Center Operations Support team. Sturckow was selected as an astronaut in 1994.