Bjarni Tryggvason

Born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1945, Bjarni and his family emigrated to Canada in 1953, spending two years in Nova Scotia before moving to Kitimat, British Columbia. There, 12-year-old Bjarni learned of the successful launch of Sputnik, the Soviet satellite, an event that sparked a life-long interest in aviation. “I remember that very clearly,” he recalled, “the world was one day an ordinary place where you did ordinary things, and the next day it was radically different.” After a few years in Kitimat, Bjarni’s family settled in Richmond, where he joined the Royal Canadian Air Cadets and his love for aviation solidified. In high school, he used his summer job money to pay for flying lessons; his goal: become an airline pilot. He advanced quickly and earned his commercial pilot wings by age 20.

At the University of British Columbia, Bjarni took Engineering Physics and graduated with a BSc in 1972. He accepted a position with the Atmospheric Environmental Service in Toronto, where he trained as a meteorologist, specifically focusing on cloud physics. Two years after graduating, Bjarni’s work as a researcher then took him to the University of Western Ontario, at the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel, where he worked on various projects focusing on industrial aerodynamics, including the CN tower. As a research associate, he traveled to the University of Tokyo in Japan and then James Cook University in North Queensland, Australia. Back teaching at Western in London, Ontario in 1979, Bjarni continued to fly, earning his instructor rating at the local airport; in time he would log nearly 1800 hours of flight instruction.

He joined the National Research Council’s Low Speed Aerodynamics Laboratory in 1982 and took on lectureships at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. By now, Bjarni no longer expected to become an airline pilot, but he kept involved with aviation at the Rockcliffe Flying Club, where he continued to instruct as well as flying aerobatics with the Ottawa chapter of Aerobatics Canada. Unexpectedly, however, a new opportunity to work in aviation soon presented itself: the Canadian government launched its astronaut program in 1983. Bjarni was one of thousands to apply and the results of the selection process were announced that December. More than twenty-five years after learning of Sputnik’s launch, Bjarni was thrilled that he was going to take his place as one of six founding members of Canada’s new astronaut corps.

From that point forward, both with the NRC and the Canadian Space Agency, he helped work on multiple projects. These included the Space Vision System Target Spacecraft, which was deployed on STS-52 in 1992, a mission for which Bjarni trained as a backup Payload Specialist. He also led work on the design and development of vibration isolation systems, the latter being one of his primary focuses for much of his time with the CSA and NASA. Eliminating vibration caused by crew movement or mechanical functions aboard a spacecraft was critical for experiments requiring a stable environment, such those involving fluid dynamics or crystal growth.

A first effort to eliminate vibration was the Large Motion Isolation Mount (LMIM) that flew on NASA aircraft, such as the KC-135 and DC-9. Next came the smaller Microgravity Vibration Isolation Mount (MIM), which was designed for space flight and installed aboard Russia’s Mir space station. Bjarni also was involved with the development of the Microgravity Vibration Isolation Subsystem (MVIS) on the International Space Station in the European Space Agency Columbus laboratory module.

On 7 August 1997, fourteen years after joining Canada’s space program, Bjarni climbed aboard space shuttle Discovery as the Payload Specialist for NASA’s STS-85, a mission designed for space science and hardware-testing for use on the ISS. Discovery carried a varied payload, including Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescopes for the Atmosphere-Shuttle Pallet Statelite-2 (CRISTA-SPA-02), a co-operative venture between the German Space Agency and NASA that studied the Earth’s atmosphere; the International Extreme Ultraviolet Hitchhiker (IEH-02); the Technology Applications and Science-01 (TAS-1); and Japan’s Manipulator Flight Development (MFD), in preparation for technology to be deployed on the ISS. For Bjarni, however, the most important experiment was the MIM-2, a more refined version of the MIM first deployed on the Mir, which was operated for approximately 30 hours involving real-time data transmission to Earth.

After the mission’s successful return, Bjarni continued at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, where he worked closely with the team operating the Space Shuttle flight simulator. Starting in 2001, he began to step away from the space program, taking a series of leaves to re-engage with university research and to enter the private sector, before retiring in 2008. Back at Western, Bjarni joined the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and continued to work on vibration isolation technology.

Leaving the space program did not mean he stopped flying, however. Having worked on the most advanced spacecraft, Bjarni shifted gears and began to engage with Canada’s aviation heritage by flying vintage aircraft. He joined the Canadian Harvard Aircraft Association, based out of Tillsonburg, Ontario, which operates a fleet of Second World War era North American Harvards. The year of his retirement, Bjarni began working with the builders of the replica Silver Dart, helping them test the aircraft’s design in the lead up to his flights on 22 February 2009. Thereafter, Bjarni taught at the International Test Pilot School in London, Ontario, where he flew the L-29 and L-39 jet trainers. He remained an active pilot for more than a decade, flying his Pitts Special, the CHAA Harvards, and, in 2019, the Jet Aircraft Museum’s T-33 decked out in the livery of the RCAF’s Red Knight solo aerobatic demonstration team. Bjarni passed away in 2022.

In recognition of his contributions to aeronautics, Bjarni Tryggvason was awarded three honourary degrees, the NASA flight medal, and Iceland’s Order of the Falcon.