- Event: Visit of space shuttle Discovery crew
- Date: Monday, Feb. 2, 1998
- Time: 1:30 p.m.
- Place: Hebb Theatre, 2045 East Mall, UBC
- Parking: Parking is available in the North Parkade. Enter
at Gate 2 off
Wesbrook Mall.
Canadian astronaut and UBC graduate Bjarni Tryggvason will introduce
fellow crew members of the space shuttle Discovery to students,
friends and colleagues at his alma mater on Monday, Feb. 2 at 1:30
p.m.
Hundreds of well-wishers are expected to fill the Hebb Theatre
and welcome the six astronauts from shuttle flight STS-85 to campus.
Four dozen elementary school students from UBC’s Summer Physics
Camp will be on hand to hear the astronauts’ account of their 11-day
scientific mission in space last summer.
“Needless to say people are very excited that Bjarni is bringing
the entire crew to campus,” says Janet Werker, UBC’s associate vice-president,
Research. “We’re all very proud of his accomplishments as a Canadian
and as a UBC alumnus.”
Tryggvason, a 1972 Engineering Physics graduate, was a payload
specialist on the shuttle flight which blasted off Aug. 7, 1997.
Aboard the shuttle was a device he helped develop with Electrical
Engineering Assoc. Prof. Tim Salcudean. The device, known as the
Microgravity Isolation Mount (MIM), allows shuttle experiments to
be conducted free from vibration.
Salcudean will be among several UBC researchers at the event whose
work has flown, or is scheduled to fly, on shuttle missions.
Anatomist Bruce Crawford sent thousands of starfish embryos into
space aboard the shuttle Endeavour in 1996 to see how zero gravity
affects early muscle development. Pathologist Don Brooks waits to
send his fifth experiment into orbit while shuttle space has also
been reserved for experiments by Prof. Al Lewis from the Dept. of
Earth and Ocean Sciences.
The astronaut visit is part of a post-flight tour which has taken
the crew to Europe, Japan and throughout the U.S.
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