who holds the Canadian records for the longest space flight (187 days, 20 hours) and the most time spent in space (204 days, 18 hours). He flew with the Columbia space shuttle mission in June 1996 that carried out 43 experiments in life and materials sciences. Thirsk was assigned to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in 1998 to train as a mission specialist and went on to become a CapCom (spacecraft communicator) for the International Space Station (ISS). In May 2009 he launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS, becoming the first Canadian astronaut to fly on a Soyuz craft.

Thirsk was selected in 1983 as a Canadian astronaut and led an international research team to study the effect of weightlessness on the heart and blood vessels. He also headed a programme to design and test an antigravity spacesuit. He resigned as an astronaut in 2012.