Credit: NASA Public Domain

Michael Phillip Anderson was a NASA astronaut and a United States Air Force officer, who flew two Shuttle missions as a mission specialist. The first was on Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-89, 1998), which was a Shuttle-Mir docking mission. The second was the fatal Columbia Shuttle mission (STS-107, 2003), which ended in disaster when the craft disintegrated after re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Dr Kass was a member of the ESA team who trained the STS-107 crew to operate the Biopack facility, a compact biological experiment facility, which flew with this mission.