Robert Thirsk

Robert Thirsk is a Canadian engineer and physician who was chosen in December 1983 by the National Research Council of Canada to join the Canadian astronaut program and was later selected as part of NASA Astronaut Group 17 in 1998. He flew two missions, STS-78 in 1996 as payload specialist on a 17-day Space Shuttle Columbia flight conducting 43 life and materials science experiments, and Soyuz TMA-15 in 2009, becoming the first Canadian astronaut to fly aboard a Soyuz spacecraft and serving as flight engineer on Expeditions 20 and 21 of the International Space Station. Across both missions he logged 204 days, 18 hours and 29 minutes in space, the Canadian record, and became the first person to receive a university degree while in orbit when the University of Calgary awarded him an honorary doctorate in July 2009.