Bjarni Tryggvason aboard the shuttle Discovery during the STS-85 mission in 1997 (NASA)
By Chris Gainor
Special to the Globe and Mail
April 15, 2022
When Bjarni Tryggvason was 12 years old and living in Kitimat, B.C., the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite of the Earth, captured his imagination. Forty years later, after a series of setbacks, he made it into space himself, as a payload specialist aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1997.
He had already earned impressive credentials, having acquired his airline transport pilot’s licence and worked as a flight instructor at Ottawa’s Rockcliffe Airport, when the Canadian government announced it was hiring astronauts in July 1983. But it was his training as an engineer specializing in fluid dynamics that earned Mr. Tryggvason the job.
His engineering and science background exactly matched the qualifications set out for Canada’s space program, for which flying experience was listed only as an “asset.” Mr. Tryggvason was one of six people chosen out of nearly 4,400 applicants for Canada’s first team of astronauts.
He died suddenly in London, Ont., on April 5 at the age of 76.
Bjarni Valdimar Tryggvason was known to blaze his own path, beginning with his birth on Sept. 21, 1945, in Reykjavik, Iceland. When he was seven, he and his family immigrated to Canada.
Young Bjarni attended primary school in Nova Scotia before his family relocated to Kitimat, B.C., and later to Richmond, B.C. In 1972 he obtained a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in engineering physics from the University of British Columbia, and he went on to do graduate work in engineering, specializing in applied mathematics and fluid dynamics at the University of Western Ontario.
After conducting research in Japan and Australia and working as a meteorologist, Mr. Tryggvason was hired as a research officer at Canada’s National Research Council (NRC) in Ottawa in 1982, where he explored the effects of very high winds on buildings and was involved in probing the causes of the Ocean Ranger disaster that year. In 1983, the NRC was charged with hiring Canada’s first group of astronauts after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the U.S. invited Canada to fly its own astronauts on board the shuttle, and Mr. Tryggvason was involved in the negotiations between the two agencies.
In December 1983, the NRC revealed Canada’s first group of astronauts: physicians Roberta Bondar and Robert Thirsk, physiologist Ken Money, and engineers Marc Garneau, Steve MacLean and Mr. Tryggvason.
In the days before the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) was created in 1989 and established its modern headquarters in Longueuil, Que., life for the newly designated astronauts was far from glamorous, as recounted by author Lydia Dotto. The six shared a suite of three small offices in the back of an out-of-the-way NRC building in Ottawa. Mr. Tryggvason acted as a flying instructor for three of his colleagues who didn’t have pilot experience as the Canadians prepared to work with U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronauts who were experienced flyers. The four astronauts purchased a Cessna 172 for the lessons.
The NRC’s plans for an orderly sequence of Canadian astronaut flights were broken during the astronauts’ first month on the job in January 1984, when NASA announced that a Canadian would have a seat on the shuttle much earlier than anticipated. Mr. Garneau became the first Canadian to fly in space that October. Late in 1985, Mr. Tryggvason was named as the backup for Mr. MacLean for a shuttle mission scheduled for 1987.
A few weeks later, however, the loss of the shuttle Challenger and its crew on Jan. 28, 1986, grounded the shuttle fleet for nearly three years and the Canadian astronaut team for twice that long. Mr. Tryggvason spent the hiatus conducting research and continuing preparations for Mr. MacLean’s flight, which finally took place in 1992. During that time, Mr. Tryggvason and his wife, Lilyanna Zmijak had a son, Michael, and a daughter, Lauren. Mr. Tryggvason was known as a proud father until the end of his life.
These were years of uncertainty for Mr. Tryggvason, because he didn’t know whether the CSA would fund a flight for him. Most astronauts flew on the shuttle as mission specialists who had two years of NASA astronaut training. Canada’s astronauts were classed as payload specialists who had less training, and payload specialists were being phased out after the Challenger disaster. As time went on, Mr. Tryggvason had to look on as his colleagues received mission specialist training, including Chris Hadfield, who joined the Canadian astronaut team in 1992 and flew three years later, and Mr. Garneau, who made a second flight in 1996.
A few months later, when Mr. Tryggvason was named to the crew of the STS-85 shuttle mission, he told reporters: “It’s about time, eh?” Along with five NASA astronauts, Mr. Tryggvason lifted off aboard Discovery Aug. 7, 1997. The launch ended his wait of more than 13 years for a flight. He became Canada’s sixth astronaut in space.
His shuttle launch was also celebrated in Iceland, the land of his birth.
During the mission, Mr. Tryggvason conducted experiments with the Microgravity Isolation Mount, which he and UBC engineering professor Tim Salcudean designed to create perfect conditions for microgravity materials experiments free of the shaking and vibrations caused by astronauts, machinery and thrusters aboard spacecraft. Their device also flew aboard the Russian Mir Space Station and later on the International Space Station (ISS).
The STS-85 crew studied changes in the Earth’s atmosphere with the assistance of a free-flying payload, and tested equipment for the ISS during a mission that lasted 11 days and 20 hours over 185 orbits of the Earth covering 7.6 million kilometres.
A year later, Mr. Tryggvason joined Mr. Thirsk and NASA’s 17th group of astronauts to begin two years of mission specialist training at NASA’s Johnson Spaceflight Center, which qualified him to fly again on the shuttle and the ISS. But the opportunity never arose before he retired from the CSA in 2008 after 25 years as an astronaut. He became a visiting professor at Western University in London, Ont.
Mr. Tryggvason continued flying airplanes. To mark the centennial of the first flight by a powered aircraft in Canada, he flew a replica of that biplane, Alexander Graham Bell’s Silver Dart, from the ice on Bras d’Or Lake near Baddeck, N.S. The flight took place a day early, on Feb. 22, 2009, in the face of an unfavourable weather forecast for the anniversary day.
He enjoyed flying many types of planes, including acrobatic aircraft with his son, Michael, and he recently served as a technical adviser for the 2022 feature film Moonfall. Among his many honours was being named an associate member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and a member of Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame.
Mr. Tryggvason leaves Ms. Zmijak and his children, Michael and Lauren Tryggvason.
Known for his mischievous sense of humour, Mr. Tryggvason could speak bluntly when confronted with substandard work. “He was the smartest engineer I ever met and a supremely skilled pilot,” Mr. Garneau, now a member of Parliament, recalled. Mr. Hadfield called him a “kind, funny, original man.”
Among the first to mourn his death was the President of Iceland, Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, who posted his condolences on Twitter, noting that Mr. Tryggvason was “the first and only Iceland-born person in space.”
