About Richard Hieb
Richard James Hieb is a former NASA astronaut and a veteran of three Space Shuttle missions. He was a mission specialist on STS-39 and STS-49, and was a payload commander on STS-65. After leaving NASA he worked at AlliedSignal and Orbital before spending 14 years as an executive at Lockheed Martin. He is currently a faculty member in the University of Colorado Boulder Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department. The STS-49 record endured for 9 years until being surpassed by James Voss and Susan Helms on the International Space Station, and now stands in second place for EVA duration. Hieb first flew on the crew of STS-39, an unclassified Department of Defense mission which launched on April 28, 1991, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This 8 hour and 29 minute spacewalk, the longest in history, broke a twenty-year-old record that was held by Apollo 17 astronauts.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.