Karl Gordon Henize

Who was Karl Gordon Henize?

Karl Gordon Henize[p], Ph.D. was an astronomer, NASA astronaut, space scientist, and professor at Northwestern University. He was stationed at several observatories around the world, including McCormick Observatory, Lamont-Hussey Observatory, Mount Wilson Observatory, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Mount Stromlo Observatory. He was in the astronaut support crew for Apollo 15 and Skylab 2/3/4. As a mission specialist on the Spacelab-2 mission, he flew on Space Shuttle Challenger in July/August 1985. He was awarded the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 1974. Nebula Henize 206 was first catalogued in the early 1950s by Dr. Henize.

He died in 1993, during a Mount Everest expedition. The purpose of this expedition was to test for NASA a meter called a Tissue Equivalent Proportional Counter: testing at different altitudes would reveal how people’s bodies would be affected, including the way bodily tissues behaved, when struck by radiation, and this was important for the planning of long duration space missions.