Loren Wilbur Acton (born March 7, 1936) is a physicist and was a Payload Specialist astronaut.
Born in Lewiston, Montana he went on to receive a bachelor of science degree from Montana State University in 1959, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Solar Physics from the University of Colorado in 1965.
Doctor Acton is the senior staff scientist with the Space Sciences Laboratory, Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory, California. As a research scientist, his principle duties included conducting scientific studies of the Sun and other celestial objects using advanced space instruments and serving as a co-investigator on one of the Spacelab 2 solar experiments, the Solar Optical Universal Polarimeter. He was selected as one of four payload specialists for Spacelab 2 on August 9, 1978, and after seven years of training he did fly on STS-51-F/ Spacelab-2. At mission conclusion, Dr. Acton had traveled over 2.8 million miles in 126 Earth orbits, logging over 190 hours in space.
He is married and has two children.
