The news of Tryggvason’s death (opens in a new tab) on Monday (April 5th) was first reported online by former NASA astronaut Leland Melvin, who trained with Tryggvason as a member of the 1998 International Astronaut Candidate Team of the US space agency. “Rest In Peace Penguin classmate. It was my honor to be trained and to work with you,” Melvin wrote on Instagram (opening in a new tab) on Wednesday (April 6th). “Condolences to the family. Lots of love.” The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) later confirmed that Trygvason had died in a statement posted on Twitter (opening in a new tab). “We are deeply saddened to learn that former CSA astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason has died,” the agency wrote. “He applied the highest standards to what he undertook.” Canadian Space Agency: Facts and Information

Official portrait of Canadian astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason. (Image: NASA) Trygvason’s one and only space flight preceded his training with Melvin. Selected by the National Research Council of Canada to become one of the country’s top six astronauts in 1983, Tryggvason began as a payload specialist with NASA’s STS-85 crew in August 1997. The 12-day mission involved the development and retrieval of a free-flight satellite (CRISTA-SPAS-2) that studied changes in the Earth’s atmosphere, as well as tested a precursor to the remote pilot or robotic arm system, now outside the Japan Unit. Kibo of the Aerospace Exploration Service (JAXA) at the International Space Station. Tryggvason’s primary task on the Discovery space shuttle was to operate and evaluate the Microgravity Vibration Isolation Mount (MIM), a small Canadian-designed instrument designed to isolate loads and experiments from any firing or firing disturbances. of the crew. An upgrade to a similar device that was successfully installed and used on the former Russian space station Mir, MIM used magnetic actuators to elevate and isolate individual experiments. It was later modified for use on the International Space Station. On the seventh day of the flight, Mission Control woke up Tryggvason and his five colleagues with the song “Good Vibrations” by The Beach Boys as a tribute to Tryggvason’s work at MIM.

STS-85 payload expert Bjarni Tryggvason, representing the Canadian Space Agency, records data from the Microgravity Vibration Isolation Mount (MIM) experiment on the middle deck of the Discovery space shuttle in August 1997. (Image: NASA) “The fact that I was working on my own science experiments was really good,” Tryggvason said in a 2015 (new tab) interview with Canadian news magazine Maclean’s. “I decided to look at how liquids will behave in space. There are many experiments that have fluid as their element. I ended up developing this electromagnetic swing platform. [and] I flew it to the Russian space station, I flew it to my flight [and] participated in the design of another that is now on the space station “. Landing near the spot where it was launched at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Trygwason recorded a total of 11 days, 20 hours, 28 minutes and 7 seconds in flight while completing 185 Earth orbits. Bjarni Valdimar Tryggvason was born on September 21, 1945 in Reykjavik, Iceland, but spent his youth in Nova Scotia and British Columbia in Canada. He earned a Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Physics from the University of British Columbia in 1972 and later completed a Master of Science in Applied Mathematics and Fluid Dynamics at the University of Western Ontario. An airline pilot with more than 4,500 hours of flight experience, including 1,800 hours as a flight instructor, Tryggvason engaged in acrobatic flights and completed pilot control on a training aircraft with the Canadian Air Force. Prior to becoming an astronaut, Tryggvason worked as a meteorologist with the cloud physics team at Meteorologic Service Canada and as a research associate in industrial aerodynamics at the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory at the University of Western Ontario. He was a visiting fellow at Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan in 1979 and James Cook University in North Queensland, Townsville, Australia in 1980. He was then a lecturer in applied mathematics at the University of Western Ontario from 1982 to 1982. Trygwasson was serving as a researcher in the Low Speed ​​Aerodynamics Laboratory on the National Research Council of Canada when the council selected him along with Roberta Bondar, Marc Garneau, Steve MacLean, Ken Money and Robert Thirsk as members of the First Astronaut Corps.

STS-85 payload expert Bjarni Tryggvason is accompanied by the Discovery space shuttle to the launch site in July 1997. (Image: NASA) Before embarking on his own mission, Tryggvason trained as a reserve for the Columbia space shuttle STS-52 crew and served as the project engineer for the Spacecraft Vision System Target Spacecraft developed by that mission in 1992. A year after returning from space, Tryggvason joined The Penguins, the 18th NASA astronaut nominee selected in 1998. The two years of basic training were to prepare Tryggvason for a possible flight as a mission specialist and initially was assigned to represent the crew at SAIL, or the Shuttle Aircraft Integration Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, which was used to test the flight software for each mission. Instead of pursuing another spaceflight mission, however, Tryggvason was licensed by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to work in the private sector. He returned to CSA for another four years before retiring in 2008 and then became a visiting professor at the University of Western Ontario. A member of the Canadian Institute of Aeronautics and Space, Tryggvason was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Western Ontario in 1998, an honorary doctorate in technology from the University of Iceland in 2000 and an honorary doctorate in engineering from the University of Western Ontario in 2005. NASA Flight Launch in 1997, the Canadian Space Agency Innovator Award in 2004 and the Knight Cross of the Icelandic Order of the Falcon. In 2003, Tryggvason and seven of his fellow Canadian astronauts were honored by the Canada Post with stamps (opens in a new tab) bearing their portraits. “I lost a good friend today,” Canadian fellow astronaut Chris Huntfield wrote on Twitter (opening in a new tab). “A pioneering astronaut, a mechanical engineer, a proud parent, an inventor, a test pilot. A kind, funny, original man.” In February 2009, Tryggvason drove a replica of Alexander Graham Bell’s Silver Dart aircraft to commemorate the 100th anniversary of its first flight to Canada and the British Empire.

Former Canadian astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason appears with the retired NASA Guidance and Navigation Simulator (GNS) during the filming of the 2022 film “Moonfall” by director Roland Emmerich. (Image: Lionsgate) Most recently, Tryggvason designed the scientific demonstrations to accompany the “Story Time from Space” training load on the International Space Station and served as technical consultant for Roland Emmerich’s feature film “Moonfall.” in a new tab) released earlier this year. He wrote 50 published works and held three patents. Tryggvason is survived by his two adult children, Michael Kristjan and Lauren Stephanie Chironne. He was previously married to Lilyanna Zmijak, but the couple divorced. Follow collectSPACE.com (opens in new tab) on Facebook (opens in new tab) and Twitter on @collectSPACE (opens in new tab). Copyright 2022 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.