payload specialist
Americannoun
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an astronaut trained to handle highly complex or classified equipment carried aboard a space shuttle and to conduct experiments in space.
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a specialist in transporting cargo.
Etymology
Origin of payload specialist
First recorded in 1970–75
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“That cannot be right,” Livingston Holder, a former manned spaceflight engineer with the Air Force and space shuttle payload specialist, recalled thinking when he first heard that fact.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 30, 2026
Mission commander and veteran space pilot Zhang Lu will be accompanied by 32-year-old flight engineer Wu Fei, China's youngest astronaut to undertake a space mission, and payload specialist Zhang Hongzhang, 39.
From Barron's ● Oct. 31, 2025
Former military university professor Zhu will serve as spaceflight engineer while Gui, a professor at Beihang University, will serve as the payload specialist on the mission, managing science experiments at the space station.
From Reuters ● May 30, 2023
In 1986, he was a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Columbia.
From Washington Times ● Jul. 5, 2022
When it was announced that John Glenn would return to space as a payload specialist in 1998, an outcry arose.
From "Women in Space" by Karen Bush Gibson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
