TORONTO, February 4, 1998 -- Canadian astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason will join two of his fellow astronauts from the August 1997 Space Shuttle Discovery crew in a visit to York University on Friday, Feb. 6.

Tryggvason, shuttle commander Lt.-Col. Curtis L. Brown, Jr., and mission specialist Lt.-Cmdr. Robert Curbeam, Jr. were aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery when it blasted off on August 7, 1997 for an 11-day mission called STS-85, which carried a variety of experiments and equipment for research in space.

The astronauts will give a one-hour presentation on the mission, including video, slides and a question-and-answer session. They will also tour the Human Performance Laboratory (HPL) of the Centre for Research in Earth and Space Technology (CRESTech), a provincial Centre of Excellence based at York University that is at the forefront of research into how astronauts' perception and sense of balance are affected by space flight. In fact, HPL scientists are departing Feb. 7 for the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas for an astronaut training session.

The visit to York University on Friday highlights the close connection between many of York's top-notch researchers and the Canadian and international space programs.

On the STS-85 mission, US astronaut Jan Davis launched a carrier called CRISTA-SPAS, which collected data about atmospheric ozone and temperatures. The German scientists who developed CRISTA-SPAS are collaborating with scientists from York's Centre for Research in Earth and Space Science (CRESS) and CRESTech. They will compare the data collected by CRISTA-SPAS with data collected simultaneously by the Wind Imaging Interferometer (WINDII), a satellite project led by CRESS Director Gordon Shepherd, a professor of Earth and Atmospheric Science at York.

CRESS is a multidisciplinary research centre at York whose members, drawn from the departments of earth and atmospheric science, chemistry, physics and astronomy, psychology and computer science, are doing leading-edge work in a broad range of topics in earth and space science. Members of CRESS are also heavily involved in the programs of the Canadian Space Agency.

Tryggvason's work on the STS-85 mission focused on a project called FLEX, or the Fluid Physics Experiment on MIM (Microgravity Vibration Isolation Mount). MIM is a unique piece of Canadian technology that is intended to isolate experiments from the effects of vibration.

The MIM was developed so that scientists could better conduct experiments on liquids and the interaction between liquid and gas. These experiments can only be done in zero-gravity space, but can be disrupted because of occasional vibrations caused by astronauts moving around or the firing of thrusters. MIM technologies serve to stabilize experiments and prevent them from being affected by these vibrations.

Tryggvason is the principal investigator for the MIM, which prior to the STS-85 flight had logged more than 400 hours of operational time on the Russian space station Mir.

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