Stephen Robinson gives a speech at the Mondavi Center on Sunday, December 4, 2005. He was awarded the UC Davis Medal by Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef, the highest award that the UC can give any individual. Summing up his lifelong passion for space, he said in a press interview that he is temporarily back on earth.
Stephen Robinson is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC Davis. The Sacramento native and graduate of UC Davis with a BS degree in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering (1978) was employed by NASA for 36 years, making four trips into space as an astronaut on the space shuttle, including the 2005 Discovery mission, STS-114 which Robinson designed the patch for. Robinson made NASA history when he performed a live on TV midflight repair of the shuttle's underbelly by pulling off two protruding strips of ceramic fabric that NASA was worried could damage the shuttle's sensitive heat tiles as the shuttle re-entered Earth's atmosphere. Robinson is the first astronaut to see and touch the underbelly of a space shuttle in space.
As an undergraduate student at UC Davis, Stephen was an active KDVS DJ, specializing in folk music. He spent a term as the program director of the station, the person in charge of making the schedule for when all the different shows are going to air, and also the person being sure the content that is broadcasted is up to par with KDVS' standards, and isn't illegal.
Stephen Robinson in space, on the left is former Ohio Senator John Glenn.
Stephen is also an accomplished guitar player.
Stephen in an alumnus of the Band-uh and took a tape of the band into space on STS-85 in 1997. He was also a Picnic Day Grand Marshall a few years back. Stephen also carried a copy of the June 7, 1997 edition (which carried a feature on him) of The California Aggie into space, and gave it to UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef, complete with signatures of all the crew members.
Robinson also made the first ever podcast from space. Unfortunately, he did not do a KDVS station ID from space, despite how cool "This is Steve Robinson on Space Shuttle Discovery and you're listening to KDVS 90.3FM" would have been.
