Laurel Clark
NASA astronaut, medical doctor, United States Navy Captain, and Space Shuttle mission specialist (1961-2003)
Laurel Blair Clark (née Salton; March 10, 1961 – February 1, 2003) was an American NASA astronaut, medical doctor, United States Navy captain, and Space Shuttle mission specialist. She died along with her six fellow crew members in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Clark was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
Early life and education
Clark was born in Ames, Iowa, but considered Racine, Wisconsin, her hometown. She graduated from William Horlick High School in Racine, Wisconsin in 1979. She enrolled at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology in 1983, and a Doctor of Medicine in 1987. Clark was also a member of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority at the university. She held a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued Technician Class amateur radio license with the call sign KC5ZSU.
Military career
During medical school, Clark did active duty training with the Diving Medicine Department at the United States Navy Experimental Diving Unit in March 1987. After completing medical school, she underwent postgraduate medical education in pediatrics from 1987 to 1988 at the National Naval Medical Center. The following year, Clark completed Navy undersea medical officer training at the Naval Undersea Medical Institute in Groton, Connecticut, and diving medical officer training at the Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center in Panama City, Florida.
The public source identifies “Laurel Clark” as nASA astronaut, medical doctor, United States Navy Captain, and Space Shuttle mission specialist (1961-2003). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Laurel, Clark and NASA.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q232441. VIAF identifies the subject as 20619026. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1961, 2003, 1979 and 1983.
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This entry incorporates text from “Laurel Clark” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.