Credit: NASA Public Domain

Colonel Richard Husband was a United States Air Force Colonel, a test pilot, and NASA astronaut. He flew as pilot on STS-96 (1999), and then as commander of the space shuttle STS-107 (Columbia). He was killed, together with his six crew members as the Shuttle disintegrated on 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 that flew with this mission.