loren wilber acton (born march 7, 1936) is an american physicist and politician. he flew on space shuttle mission sts-51-f as a payload specialist for the lockheed palo alto research laboratory. he was born lewistown, montana. he did scientific studies of the sun and other celestial objects using advanced space instruments. he was a co-investigator on one of the spacelab 2 solar experiments, the solar optical universal polarimeter.