Consider this: It is now four decades ago that astronaut Owen Garriott, callsign W5LFL, pioneered amateur radio communication from space. He was a crewmember on the space shuttle program's STS-9 ...

Owen Garriott (W5LFL) had a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the time he was selected as one of the first six scientist-astronauts in 1965. He trained for and eventually flew on Skylab 3 in 1973.

Back in 1973, Owen Garriott, astronaut and physicist, lived aboard Skylab, America’s first space station, for 59 days. The station’s core was a modified Saturn V third stage, the S-IVB ...