Brand, Vance DeVoe (1931- )

US astronaut. He piloted the command module on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project launched in July 1975. He was commander of three space shuttle missions: aboard Columbia in November 1982 (the first fully operational shuttle flight), on Challenger in February 1984, and on Columbia again in December 1990. Brand was selected as an astronaut in 1966 and logged 746 hours in spacecraft. He resigned as an astronaut in 1992 and was appointed deputy director for Aerospace Projects at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center.