Ed Campion
Headquarters, Washington, DC               November 4, 1996
(Phone:  202/358-1778)

Eileen Hawley
Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX
(Phone:  713/483-5111)

RELEASE:  96-224

CANADIAN PAYLOAD SPECIALIST JOINS STS-85 CREW

Canadian Space Agency astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason has 
been added to the crew of STS-85 as a payload specialist 
candidate for Discovery's 11-day mission to study changes in 
the Earth's atmosphere.  The flight is scheduled for launch 
in July 1997.

Tryggvason will support the Canadian-sponsored 
Microgravity Vibration Isolation Mount (MIM) investigation.  
MIM is a small double-locker size device designed to isolate 
International Space Station payloads and experiments from 
disturbances created by thruster firings or crew activity.  
MIM will be operated for 30 hours with real-time data 
transmission to investigators on the ground.

The rest of the STS-85 crew, Commander Curtis L. Brown, 
Jr. (Lt. Col., USAF), Pilot Jeffrey S. Ashby (Cmdr., USN) and 
Mission Specialists N. Jan Davis, Ph.D., Robert L. Curbeam, 
Jr., (Lt. Cmdr., USN), and Stephen K. Robinson, Ph.D, were 
named in September.

For complete biographical information on the STS-85 
crew and other astronauts, see the NASA Internet astronaut 
biography home page at address: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/


                           -end-