Bjarni Tryggvason Autographs, Memorabilia & Collectibles

Personal profile: Born September 21, 1945, in Reykjavik, Iceland, Bjarni Tryggvason has two children. He is an Airline Transport rated pilot with more than 4,500 hours of flight experience, and 1,800 hours as a flight instructor. Mr. 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: Attended primary school in Nova Scotia and British Columbia and high school in Richmond, British Columbia. Obtained a Bachelor of Applied Science in Engineering Physics, from the University of British Columbia in 1972. Completed 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 honours: Canadian Space Agency Innovators Award (3), 2003; Order of the Falcon from Iceland; Doctorate of Philosophy (honoris causa), University of Iceland, 2000; Doctor of Science (honoris causa), University of Western Ontario, 1998; NASA Space Flight Medal 1997; numerous scholarships throughout university years.

Experience: Bjarni Tryggvason was a meteorologist with the cloud physics group at the Meteorlogic Service Canada (formerly the Atmospheric Environment Service) in Toronto in 1972 and 1973. After this, he served as a research associate in industrial aerodynamics at the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory at the University of Western Ontario from 1974 to 1979.

Mr. Tryggvason was a guest research associate at Kyoto University, in Kyoto, Japan, in 1979 and at James Cook University of North Queensland, in Townsville, Australia in 1980. He was a lecturer in Applied Mathematics at the University of Western Ontario from 1980 to 1982.

From 1982 to 1984, Mr. Tryggvason was a Research Officer at the Low Speed Aerodynamics Laboratory at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and was a lecturer at the University of Ottawa and at Carleton University from 1982 to 1992.

Selected as one of the original six Canadian astronauts in December 1983, Mr. Tryggvason trained as a backup payload specialist 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.

Mr. Tryggvason also served as the principal investigator for the following projects: the development of the Large Motion Isolation Mount (LMIM) which flew numerous times on NASA KC-135 and DC-9 aircraft; 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. He was the originator and technical director during the early development phase of the Microgravity Vibration Isolation Subsystem (MVIS), which the CSA developed for the European Space Agency Fluid Science Laboratory for the ISS.

On August 7, 1997, Mr. Tryggvason 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 crewmembers 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.

From mid 2001 to 2003 he worked in the private sector while on leave from the CSA. He returned temporarily to work at the CSA in 2004 and currently holds the position of visiting professor at the University of Western Ontario.

He has written more than 50 published papers and holds three patents.