Christopher Joseph "Gus" Loria (born July 9, 1960, in Newton, Massachusetts) is a retired United States Marine Corps Colonel and a medically retired NASAastronaut. He was originally scheduled to fly on STS-113 as pilot; however, he was grounded from spaceflight due to a severe back injury.
Personal
Colonel "CJ" Loria was born in Belmont, Massachusetts. His mother, Joan Loria, resides in Maple Plain, Minnesota and his father, Robert L. Loria is deceased.[1]
January 1994 to July 1996, he was assigned to the Strike Aircraft Test Squadron, Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, as an experimental test pilot. Loria distinguished himself in the areas of high angle of attack flight test, aircraft departure and spin testing, ordnance, flight controls and aircraft flying qualities testing for the F/A-18 Hornet, NASA F/A-18 'HARV' thrust vectoring aircraft and the X-31A aircraft. Colonel Loria was the Naval Test Wing Atlantic's test pilot of the year in 1995. In 1996 he was the runner up for the Society of Experimental Test Pilot's coveted Iven C. Kinchloe Award for the test pilot of the year world-wide.
From August 2004 through February 2005 he was assigned as the Deputy Chief Engineer, Constellation Program at NASA Headquarters. In the fall of 2005 a NASA medical evaluation determined that his previous injuries disqualified him from further space flight assignments. Colonel Loria requested a transfer back to the US Marine Corps and left NASA in February 2005.
He has 3,079 hours of flight time and has flown 32 different aircraft.
NASA career
Loria's NASA experience includes assignment as test pilot and Project Officer for the Department of the Navy on the X-31 Program at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards Air Force Base, California, from July 1994 to June 1995. He was also a test pilot on Dryden's F/A-18 High Alpha Research Vehicle or "HARV" during March 1995, conducting spin testing and the first successful excitation of the Hornet Falling Leaf out of control mode during flight test. Lead Department of the Navy test pilot on the NASA/U.S. Navy/Industry Aircraft Control Power Working Group.
Selected by NASA in April 1996 as an Astronaut Candidate, Loria reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1996. Having completed two years of training and evaluation, he was qualified for flight assignment as a shuttle pilot. Loria was initially assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office as an Ascent and Entry CAPCOM. Loria served as an Ascent/Entry Capcom for Space Shuttle missions STS-102 (Mar. 2001), STS-106 (Sept. 2000), STS-97 (Dec. 2000), STS-102 (Mar 2001), STS-104 (June 2001), STS-105 (June 2001). Additionally, he served as an International Space Station (ISS) CAPCOM for Space Station Expedition III in the spring of 2001.
Assigned as pilot on STS-113, Loria was medically grounded after he experienced two herniated discs in his lower back during the summer of 2002. From September 2002 through July 2003 he served as the Chief of Flight Test for the Orbital Space Plane Program. Selected by the NASA Headquarters Executive Development Education panel, was the recipient of the coveted NASA Fellowship to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. While at Harvard, Loria was selected as a Harvard University Non-Resident Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (a policy institute or think tank) for 2003-04 where he worked on clean energy policy. He earned an MPA in June 2004, and was selected as a Fellow at the Center for Business and Government (a policy institute or think tank) at the Kennedy School. Following Harvard, Loria served as the Deputy Chief Engineer for the Constellation Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
During the fall of 2004, Loria's injuries were deemed inoperable and resulted in his being medically disqualified from future space flight exploration missions. Loria requested assignment back to the operational forces of the Marine Corps.
He became a member of the Senior Executive Service and served as the Director of the Earth Resources Observation and Science center (EROS), with the U.S. Geological Survey in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Colonel Loria is now retired, and resides in Orono, Minnesota.
Post NASA career
He served as a consultant for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Office of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Office of Congressman Jim Bridenstine, and International Launch Services, Inc. (ILS). With SAIC and later Leidos, he worked on National strategic programs with the Defense Information Systems Agency at Fort Meade, MD. During 2014 & 2015 he was the second Observatory Director for the NSF's National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). As a member of the Federal government's Senior Executive Service with the U.S. Geological Survey he was the Center Director for the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center in Sioux Falls, SD.
