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In an attempt to curry favor with astronaut selector George Abbey, Bagian, wearing a Superman costume, was lowered by another astronaut from the roof down to Abbey's ninth floor office. He knocked on the window, sang Happy Birthday, then continued to the ground. Left the Astronaut Corps in August 1995 for a position with the Environmental Protection Agency.
Official NASA Biography - 1995
Dr. Bagian first flew on the crew of STS-29, which launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, aboard the Orbiter Discovery, on March 13, 1989. During this highly successful five-day mission, the crew deployed a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite and performed numerous secondary experiments, including a Space Station -heat pipe" radiator experiment, two student experiments, a protein crystal growth experiment, and a chromosome and plant cell division experiment. Also, Dr. Bagian was the principal investigator and performed Detailed Supplementary Objective 470 which described, by the use of transcranial Doppler, the changes of cerebral blood flow and its relationship to Space Adaptation Syndrome (SAS) and Space Motion Sickness (SMS). Dr. Bagian was the first person to treat SMS with the drug Phenergan by intramuscular injection. This represented the first successful treatment regimen for SMS and has now been adopted by NASA as the standard of care for the control of SMS in Shuttle crews and is routinely used. In addition, the crew took over 3,000 photographs of the Earth using several types of cameras, including the IMAX 70 mm movie camera. Mission duration was 80 orbits and concluded with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on March 18, 1989. With the completion of this mission, he logged over 119 hours in space.
More recently, Dr. Bagian served on the crew of STS-40 Spacelab Life Sciences (SLS-1), the first dedicated space and life sciences mission, which launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on June 5, 1991. SLS-1 was a nine-day mission during which crew members performed experiments which explored how the heart, blood vessels, lungs, kidneys, and hormone-secreting glands respond to microgravity, the causes of space sickness, and changes in muscles, bones, and cells which occur in humans during space flight. Other payloads included experiments designed to investigate materials science, plant biology and cosmic radiation. In addition to the scheduled payload activities on STS-40, Dr. Bagian was successful in personally devising and implementing repair procedures for malfunctioning experiment hardware which allowed all scheduled scientific objectives to be successfully accomplished. Following 146 orbits of the Earth, Columbia and her crew landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on June 14, 1991. Completion of this flight logged him an additional 218 hours in space.
Dr. Bagian is taking a leave of absence from NASA. He is currently involved in both the practice of occupational medicine and biomedical research.
Characteristics
Departed: August 1995. Departed Date: 1995-08-01. Degree: MD. Marital Status: Married. Children: Four children. Education: Drexel;Jefferson;Patuxent.
Birth Place: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Status: Inactive.
Born: 1952.02.22.
Spaceflights: 2 .
Total time in space: 14.08 days.
Mission Specialists: Bachelor's degree in engineering, biological science, physical science or mathematics and minimum three years of related experience or an advanced degree. Vision minimum 20/150 uncorrected, correctable to 20/20. Maximum sitting blood pressure of 140/90. Height between 150 and 193 cm..
