Michael P. Anderson

Michael P. Anderson was an American physicist and United States Air Force officer who served as payload commander on the Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-107 in January 2003, his second spaceflight. He was the senior mission specialist responsible for the missions science payload, which included dozens of experiments across multiple disciplines. Anderson was among the seven crew members killed when Columbia broke apart during reentry on February 1, 2003, and he is remembered as one of relatively few African American astronauts of his era to command a Shuttle payload mission.