He attended Mills School, and is a graduate of Crawfordsville High School in Indiana, Class of 1955; received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics and Physics from DePauw University in 1959, where he was a member of The Delta Chapter of Beta Theta Pi,[1] and a Master of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Physics from Yale University in 1961 and 1965,[2] respectively.

Returning to the Johnson Space Center in 1978, as a senior scientist astronaut, Allen was assigned to the Operations Mission Development Group.

He served as a support crew member for the first orbital flight test of the Space Shuttle (Columbia) in April 1981 and was the CAPCOM during the reentry phase for this mission.

STS-5, the first mission with four crewmembers, clearly demonstrated the Space Shuttle as fully operational by the successful first deployment of two commercial communications satellites from the Orbiter's payload bay.

[6] The STS-5 crew successfully concluded the 5-day orbital flight of Space Shuttle Columbia with the first entry and landing through a cloud deck to a hard-surface runway and demonstrated maximum braking.

STS-5 completed 81 orbits of the Earth in 122 hours before landing on a concrete runway at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on November 16, 1982.

During the mission the crew deployed two satellites, Canada's Anik D-2 (Telesat H) and Hughes' LEASAT-1 (Syncom IV-1), and operated the 3M Company's Diffusive Mixing of Organic Solutions experiment.

In the first space salvage attempt in history, Allen and Gardner performed spacewalks and successfully retrieved for return to Earth the Palapa B-2 and Westar VI communications satellites.