NASA astronaut visits Kiruna/Astronaut från Nasa besöker Kiruna

NASA astronaut Mario Runco will this week participate in the teaching of Umeå university’s summer course in Manned Space Flight, which is run by the Department of Space Science in Kiruna. Students attending the course come from Sweden and other countries e.g. Ireland, Russia and Bangladesh. The course has included lectures on the history of manned space flight, space medicine and space tourism. On Thursday 25 August at 08:40 Mario Runco will give a presentation titled "An Astronaut’s view of Earth” in the Aula of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF), Kiruna. Press representatives are welcome to attend the presentation and to meet Mario afterwards in the Aula between 09:45 and 10:15. (Please inform Stina Andersson tel +46-980-79062, if you intend to attend.) Selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate in June 1987, Mario qualified for assignment as an astronaut mission specialist in August of 1988. A veteran of three space flights (STS-44 in 1991, STS-54 in 1993, and STS-77 in 1996), Mario has logged over 551 hours in space which includes a 4.5 hour spacewalk during his STS-54 mission. His technical assignments to date include having served in Operations Development, where he assisted in the design, development and testing of the Space Shuttle crew escape system; in Mission Support, at the Software Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL), where he performed test and evaluation of Space Shuttle mission-specific flight software; at the Kennedy Space Center, as Astronaut Support, where he assisted in preparing Space Shuttle missions for launch, and in the Mission Control Center as a Capsule (Spacecraft) Communicator (CAPCOM). Mario currently serves as an Earth and Planetary Scientist and is the Lead for Science and Utilization of the International Space Station’s Destiny Module Science Window and the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF). On 30 August Mario will hold a lecture at the university in Umeå and 30-31 August he will participate in the Swedish-American Entrepreneurial days in Umeå. For more information: Docent Carol Norberg, Carol.Norberg@ryp.umu.se, tel. 0980-791 80, 070-279 39 99 For more information about the summer university see our web page www.ltu-umu.irv.se