page_title: Robert A. Parker
section_title: NASA career
hierarchical_section_title: Robert A. Parker / Biography / NASA career
caption_attribution_description: English: Mission Specialist Robert Parker manually points instruments on ASTRO-1 on Columbia's aft flight deck, STS-35.
context_page_description: Robert Allan Ridley Parker is an American physicist and astronomer, former Director of the NASA Management Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and a retired NASA astronaut. He was a Mission Specialist on two Space Shuttle missions, STS-9 and STS-35.
  He has logged over 3,500 hours flying time in jet aircraft and 463 hours in space.
context_section_description: Parker was selected as a scientist-astronaut by NASA in August 1967. He was a member of the Astronaut Support Crews for the Apollo 15 and 17 missions, and was the person to whom the final words spoken by a man standing on the surface of the moon (Gene Cernan) were addressed.  Later, he served as program scientist for the Skylab Program Director's Office during the three manned Skylab flights.
  From March 1988 to March 1989, Parker was stationed at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. where he served as Director of the Space Flight/Space Station Integration Office.
  A veteran of two Spacelab missions, Parker was a Mission Specialist on STS-9/Spacelab-1 (28 November–8 December 1983) and on STS-35 (2–10 December 1990); which featured the ASTRO-1 ultraviolet astronomy laboratory.
caption: Parker points instruments on ASTRO-1 on Columbia's aft flight deck during STS-35
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