Bjarni Tryggvason was a former Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut who served as a Payload Specialist on Space Shuttle mission STS-85, a mission to study changes in the Earth’s atmosphere. He had over 4,000 hours of flight experience and was a part of several major space missions undertaken by the CSA and the National Research Council (NRC). He was one of Canada's original six astronauts and was trained as a backup payload specialist for the CANEX-2 set of experiments. He also served as the project engineer for the Space Vision System Target Spacecraft on Mission STS-52. Born in Iceland, he grew up in Vancouver and began his career as a meteorologist with the cloud physics group at the Atmospheric Environment Service in Toronto. His association with the NRC began when he joined the Low Speed Aerodynamics Laboratory in Ottawa. While researching on the sinking of the Ocean Ranger oil rig, he designed and led the aerodynamics tests as a part of the NRC team investigating this case. Following this he was selected as one of the six Canadian astronauts. Before embarking on a career as an astronaut he used to teach graduate courses on structural dynamics and random vibrations as a part-time lecturer. After his retirement, he returned to teaching.