Jerome "Jay" Apt III (born April 28, 1949) is an American astronaut and professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

Before becoming an astronaut, Apt was a physicist who worked on the Pioneer Venus 1978 space probe project, and used visible light and infrared techniques to study the planets and moons of the solar system from ground-based observatories.

In 1992, Apt flew on STS-47 aboard shuttle Endeavour as the flight engineer,[5] and commander of one of the two shifts in this round-the-clock mission.

[7] In 2003, Apt joined the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University where he is a Full Professor (emeritus) at the Tepper School of Business and the Department of Engineering and Public Policy.

[8] He is the author of the book Orbit: NASA Astronauts Photograph the Earth, published by the National Geographic Society.

[9] He received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1997 and the Metcalf Lifetime Achievement Award for significant contributions to engineering in 2002.

In 2012, the International Astronomical Union approved the name "Jeromeapt" for the main-belt asteroid 116903, as suggested by its discoverer, James Young.