Blaha, John Elmer (1942– )

US astronaut John Blaha, with the white-room technicians just before boarding space shuttle Atlantis for STS-79. Blaha was mission specialist on this, the first, NASA-Mir crew member-exchange mission, replacing Shannon Lucid on the Mir space station.

US astronaut. His five space shuttle flights include a record 14-day life-science research mission on the space shuttle Columbia (October–November 1993), regarded by NASA as its most successful and efficient Spacelab flight. During the mission, the seven crew members performed medical experiments on themselves. In September 1996, the space shuttle Atlantis took Blaha to the Mir space station, where he stayed for four months. He was selected as an astronaut in 1980 and left NASA in 1997.