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BJARNI V. TRYGGVASON
ASTRONAUT, CANADIAN SPACE AGENCY
PERSONAL DATA: Born September 21, 1945, in Reykjavik, Iceland, Bjarni Tryggvason is married with two children. He is an Airline Transport rated pilot with more than 4000 hours of flight experience, and 1800 hours as a flight instructor. Tryggvason is active in aerobatic flight and completed a Captaincy check in the Tutor jet trainer with the Canadian Air Force. He enjoys jogging, skiing, and general fitness.
EDUCATION: High school in Richmond, British Columbia; Bachelor of Applied Science in Engineering Physics, University of British Columbia, 1972; postgraduate work in engineering with specialization in applied mathematics and fluid dynamics at the University of Western Ontario.
AFFILIATIONS: Member of the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute.
SPECIAL HONORS: Numerous scholarships throughout university years; Honorary Doctorates from the University of Western Ontario in 1998 and from the University of Iceland in 2000, NASA Space Flight Medal 1997, Order of the Falcon from Iceland.
EXPERIENCE: Meteorologist with the cloud physics group at the Meteorlogic Service Canada (formerly the Atmospheric Environment Service) in Toronto in 1972 and 1973: research associate in industrial aerodynamic at the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory at the University of Western Ontario 1974 to 1979.
Guest research associate at Kyoto University, in Kyoto, Japan, in 1979; similar position at James Cook University of North Queensland, in Townsville, Australia in 1980. Lecturer in Applied Mathematics at the University of Western Ontario from 1980 to 1982.
Research Officer at the Low Speed Aerodynamics Laboratory at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) from 1982 to 1984. Lecturer at the University of Ottawa and at Carleton University 1982 to 1992.
Selected as one of the original six Canadian astronauts in December 1983; trained as a backup payload specialist to Steve MacLean for the CANEX-2 set of experiments, which flew on Mission STS-52 in October 1992. He was also the project engineer for the Space Vision System Target Spacecraft, which was deployed during that mission.
He was the principal investigator in the development of the Large Motion Isolation Mount (LMIM) which flew numerous times on NASA KC-135 and DC-9 aircraft; of the Microgravity vibration Isolation Mount (MIM) which operated on the Russian space station, Mir, from April 1996 until January 1998 to support several Canadian and US experiments in material science and fluid physics; and of the MIM-2 which flew on STS-85 in August 1997.
On August 7, 1997, he flew as a payload specialist aboard Space Shuttle Discovery on Mission STS-85. His primary role was to test MIM-2 and perform fluid science experiments designed to examine sensitivity to spacecraft vibrations, in order to develop a better understanding of the need for systems such as the MIM on the International Space Station (ISS), and to study the effect vibrations have on the many experiments performed on the ISS.
In August 1998, he was invited to take part in NASA mission specialist training held at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. His class underwent two years of physical and academic training, and marked the first group of astronauts to be trained as both mission specialists for the space shuttle and as potential crew members for the ISS.
Following completion of mission specialist training, his NASA duties included serving as a crew representative for the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL), which is used to test shuttle flight software prior to onboard use. He also supported integrated simulations on the ISS Training Facility at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas and served as a CSA representative on the NASA Microgravity Measurement Working Group and on the ISS Microgravity Analytic Integration Team.
He continues to act as a technical consultant for the development of the Microgravity Vibration Isolation Subsystem (MVIS), which the CSA is developing for use in the European Space Agency Fluid Science Laboratory on the ISS and for the MIM-Base Unit, which the CSA will install on the ISS. He is currently on sabbatical leave working with private industry to promote terrestrial applications of this technology.
JUNE 2004
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