[1] A Distinguished Graduate of the USAF Academy, Jones served on active duty as an Air Force officer for 6 years.

After pilot training in Oklahoma, he flew strategic bombers at Carswell Air Force Base, Texas.

As pilot and aircraft commander of a B-52 D Stratofortress, he led a combat crew of six, accumulating over 2,000 hours of jet experience before resigning as a captain in 1983.

His research interests included the remote sensing of asteroids, meteorite spectroscopy, and applications of space resources.

First, in April 1994, he ran science operations on the "night shift" during STS-59, the first flight of the Space Radar Laboratory (SRL-1).

Jones and his crew delivered the Destiny module to the International Space Station, (ISS) and he helped install the Lab in a series of three spacewalks lasting over 19 hours.

The successful addition of Destiny gave the first Expedition Crew the largest space outpost in history and marked the start of onboard scientific research at the ISS.

He is a senior research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, engaged in planning robotic and astronaut expeditions to deep space and the near-Earth asteroids.