Louis William Butterworth (1948. 17 July 17 in Casper, Wyoming - ) is an American engineer and astronaut. He gained a degree in mechanical engineering in 1970 at the University of Utah. In 1972, he worked at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory as an engineer, and joined the astronaut training program and was selected on 5 July 1984. He was the back-up payload specialist astronaut for G. Jarvis on the ill-fated STS-51-L space shuttle Challenger launch on January 28, 1986: He left NASA in the same year. He later worked at Hughes Space and Communications; and in 2004 became senior vice president of DirecTV Inc. - retiring in November 2013. He is currently working as a Communications Industry Consultant at CDI Professional Services
