Michael Logan Lampton (born March 1, 1941) was an American astronaut, founder of the optical ray tracing company Stellar Software, and known for his paper on electroacoustics with Susan M Lea, The theory of maximally flat loudspeaker systems.
Personal life
Lampton was born March 1, 1941, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. In 1961, while Lampton was attending Caltech he was one of the "Fiendish Fourteen", 14 students responsible for the Great Rose Bowl Hoax. He was married to San Francisco State University physicist, Susan M. Lea, and they had one daughter, Jennifer Lea Lampton.
Education
Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Caltech, 1962
Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California-Berkeley, 1967
SuperNova Acceleration Probe (SNAP) Project
Lampton was heavily involved with the SNAP project. SNAP, the Supernova/Acceleration Probe, was to study exploding stars called supernovae, as well as the gentle smearing of the light from distant galaxies due to gravity — called weak gravitational lensing — and put limits on what may or may not be the force driving the outward pull on the Universe. SNAP was to investigate over one thousand square degrees of sky with a 500 megapixel camera.
SNAP was part of the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM), a cooperative venture between NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy. SNAP collaborators John Mather and George Smoot were awarded the 2006 Nobel prize in physics. The SNAP was superseded by the Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope (WFIRST)., and now the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope – or Roman Space Telescope, – a NASA observatory designed to settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics. The telescope was initially developed as the WFIRST, and renamed in 2020 to honor Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy. Roman has been called the “mother” of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Career with NASA
Lampton was a NASA payload specialist from 1978 to 1992. Below is a list of the missions he was a part of.
Death
Michael Lampton died in Berkeley, California, on Friday, 9 June 2023, at the age of 82 years.