posted 04-30-2008 04:53 PM               

The 62-year-old father of two says he has decided not to renew his contract when it comes up this summer.

Tryggvason told The Canadian Press that he plans to spend the next year teaching at the University of Western Ontario.

He went into space in 1997 when the former pilot flew as a payload specialist aboard Space Shuttle Discovery.

Born in Reykjavik, Iceland, Tryggvason was selected as one of the original six Canadian astronauts in December, 1983.

His retirement comes as the Canadian Space Agency gets set to begin a national astronaut recruitment campaign at the end of May.

posted 04-30-2008 05:30 PM               

Mr. Tryggvason also served as the principal investigator for the following projects: the development of the Large Motion Isolation Mount (LMIM) which flew numerous times on NASA KC-135 and DC-9 aircraft; the Microgravity vibration Isolation Mount (MIM) which operated on the Russian space station, Mir, from April 1996 until January 1998 to support several Canadian and US experiments in material science and fluid physics; and of the MIM-2 which flew on STS-85 in August 1997. He was the originator and technical director during the early development phase of the Microgravity Vibration Isolation Subsystem (MVIS), which the CSA developed for the European Space Agency Fluid Science Laboratory for the ISS.

On August 7, 1997, Mr. Tryggvason flew as a payload specialist aboard Space Shuttle Discovery on Mission STS-85. His primary role was to test MIM-2 and perform fluid science experiments designed to examine sensitivity to spacecraft vibrations, in order to develop a better understanding of the need for systems such as the MIM on the International Space Station (ISS), and to study the effect vibrations have on the many experiments performed on the ISS.