Joseph P. Allen

Joseph Percival Allen IV, known as Joe Allen, is an American physicist and former NASA astronaut, born on 27 June 1937 in Crawfordsville, Indiana. He earned a bachelor of arts in math-physics from DePauw University in 1959 and a master of science and a Ph.D. in physics from Yale University in 1961 and 1965. NASA selected him on 4 August 1967 as part of astronaut group 6, and he flew twice as a mission specialist: on Columbia during STS-5 from 11 to 16 November 1982, and on Discovery during STS-51A from 8 to 16 November 1984. Together the two flights lasted a little over thirteen days. He retired from NASA on 1 July 1985 to become president of the Industrial Space Facility, and from 1995 to 2004 he served as president of Calspan SRL Corp. in Washington, D.C.