Mario Runco Jr.

Mario Runco Jr. is a former United States Naval officer and NASA astronaut.

As an undergraduate, he received the City College of New York Class of 1938 Athletic Service Award and is believed to be the first person of Italian origin to fly in space, being decorated accordingly by the president of Italy in 1999.

Crewmate Greg Harbaugh (EV1) and Runco (EV2) also became the 47th and 48th Americans to walk in space during a 4.5-hour spacewalk designed to evaluate the limits of human performance during extravehicular activities (EVA) in anticipation of the construction of the ISS.

Included in these EVA evaluations was the first and only attempt thus far at ingressing a personal foot restraint (PFR) without the use of handholds, which Runco accomplished successfully and is still the only person to have done so.

Of Runco, his spacewalking crew mate commented, “Mario was the most naturally skilled EVA guy I ever saw.

Mario Runco, Jr. was born on January 26, 1952, in The Bronx, New York, to Mario and Filomena Ragusa Runco.

Raised in the Highbridge neighborhood of The Bronx, his family moved to Yonkers, New York, in his early teen years.

Runco graduated from Sacred Heart School, in the Bronx, NY in 1966 and Cardinal Hayes High School, the Bronx, NY in 1970.

He earned a bachelor of science degree in meteorology and physical oceanography from the City College of New York in 1974 and a master of science degree in meteorology from Rutgers University in 1976.

He played intercollegiate ice hockey on the City College of New York and Rutgers University teams.

He was awarded the Defense Superior Service Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, NASA Exceptional Service Medal, Navy Achievement Medal and Navy Pistol Expert Medal.

He was also awarded three NASA Space Flight Medals (STS-44, STS-54 and STS-77), two Navy Sea Service Ribbons (USS NASSAU [LHA-4] and USNS CHAUVENET [T-AGS-29]), and the Navy Battle Efficiency Ribbon (USS NASSAU [LHA-4]).

In 1977, he joined the New Jersey State Police and, after completing training at the State Police Academy, he worked as a New Jersey State Trooper until he entered the United States Navy in June 1978.

Upon completion of Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, in September 1978, he was commissioned and assigned to the Naval Oceanographic and Atmospheric Research Laboratory then known as the Naval Environmental Prediction Research Facility (NEPRF) in Monterey, California, as a research meteorologist.

From April 1981 to December 1983, he served as the Meteorological Officer aboard the amphibious assault ship USS NASSAU [LHA-4].

It was during this tour of duty that he earned his designation as a Naval Surface Warfare Officer.

From January 1984 to December 1985, he worked as a laboratory instructor at the Naval Postgraduate School, specifically the Geophysics Technical Readiness Laboratory, in Monterey, California.

From December 1985 to December 1986, he served as Commanding Officer of Oceanographic Unit 4 embarked in the naval survey vessel USNS CHAUVENET [T-AGS-29], conducting hydrographic and oceanographic surveys of the Makassar and Sunda Straits and the Flores and Java Seas, Indonesia.

His last assignment within the Navy before being assigned to NASA was as Fleet Environmental Services Officer at the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command's Naval Western Meteorology and Oceanography Center, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

He was selected as an astronaut with in 1987.

He flew three Space Shuttle missions, performed a spacewalk on his second mission, and is now retired both from NASA and the U.S. Navy.

He joined NASA in 1987 and remained on active duty as a NASA astronaut until 1994 after which he continued his NASA career as a civilian astronaut until his retirement.

Selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate in June 1987, Runco qualified for assignment as an astronaut mission specialist in August 1988.

A veteran of three space flights (STS-44 in 1991, STS-54 in 1993, and STS-77 in 1996), Runco has logged over 551 hours in space which includes a 4.5 hour spacewalk during his STS-54 mission.

His technical assignments included serving in Operations Development, where he assisted in the design, development and testing of the Space Shuttle crew escape system after the Challenger (Orbiter Vehicle {OV}-099) accident; in Mission Support, at the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL, OV-095) as a SAIL Commander, performing test and evaluation of Space Shuttle mission-specific flight software; at the Kennedy Space Center, as an Astronaut Support Person (ASP or "cape Crusader"), where he assisted in preparing Space Shuttle missions for launch supporting missions STS-81, 82, 83, 84, 94, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, & 91, and in the Johnson Space Center's Mission Control Center as a Capsule (Spacecraft) Communicator (CAPCOM) supporting missions STS-60, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 92, 93, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 104, 105, 106, & 109 as the Lead CAPCOM for the last Hubble Space Telescope repair mission.

He was served as an Earth and planetary scientist and the lead for Spacecraft Window Optics and Utilization for the International Space Station's (ISS's) windows, including the U.S. Laboratory Destiny Module Nadir Science Window, the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF), and the ISS's Cupola windows, all of which he helped design.

On his first flight, Runco served as a Mission Specialist (MS-3) on the crew of STS-44 aboard the Space Shuttle ATLANTIS (OV-104) which launched from the Kennedy Space Center's (KSC's) launch pad 39A on the night of November 24, 1991.

The primary mission objective was accomplished with the successful deployment of a Defense Support Program (DSP) satellite.

In addition, the crew conducted two Military Man-in-Space Earth Observation experiments (M88-1, on which he was the lead, and Terra Scout), three radiation monitoring experiments, and numerous life sciences experiments in support of long duration space flights.

STS-44 was originally scheduled as a 10-day mission; however, the oxygen loading for the mission was not sufficient to last 10 days due to the weight of the primary payload so the crew would need to drastically conserve power to be able to make the oxygen last through the full mission duration.

The crew’s power conservation efforts paid off on flight day 6 when it appeared there finally was enough oxygen to last the rest of the mission; however, the mission was cut short as Minimum Duration Flight (MDF) when a second navigational Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) was powered up for redundancy and immediately failed and (CAPCOM) and fellow classmate Jan Davis dejectedly called the Commander Fred Gregory with the bad news, "“Fred, we’ve run out of ideas on IMU-2. We see problems both with the attitude and the velocity. We have declared IMU-2 failed.” ATLANTIS (OV-104) returned with only 2 of 3 IMU’s (#'s 1 and 3) operating to a contingency landing the next day on lakebed runway 05 at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on December 1, 1991, completing 110 orbits of the Earth.

Even before launching for his first mission, Runco was assigned as a Mission Specialist (MS1) to his second flight, STS-54, which would fly on the Space Shuttle ENDEAVOUR (OV-105).

STS-54 launched from KSC’s launch pad 39B launch pad 39B on January 13, 1993, and landed at the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) runway 33 at KSC in Florida on January 19, 1993, completing 96 orbits of the Earth.

The six-day mission’s primary objective was accomplished with his deployment of a NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-F) on flight day 1.

Also carried in the payload bay was the Diffuse X-Ray Spectrometer (DXS).

This astronomical instrument for studying stellar evolution scanned the local vicinity of our Milky Way galaxy and recorded the low-energy X-ray emanations believed to originate from the plasma remnants of an ancient supernova.

He received an honorary doctor of science degree from the City College of New York in 1999.

He received a Rotary National Space Achievement Stellar Team Award (2002) for his work on the International Space Station’s (ISS’s) Science Window and the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF), He was also the recipient of the City College of New York's Townsend Harris Medal (1993), and the Cardinal Hayes High School Cardinal Francis Joseph Spellman Award (1993).

Working at various positions even through his school years, Runco worked continuously from age nine until his retirement on December 31, 2017, eventually accumulating 57 years of continuous employment and almost 48 years of federal service with four different federal agencies (USPOD/USPS, USGS, USN, and NASA).

After graduating from Rutgers University, he worked for a year as a research hydrologist conducting ground water surveys for the United States Geological Survey on Long Island, New York.