Thomas, Andrew Sydney Withiel (1951– )

US astronaut. His three missions include 141 days in space as a crew member aboard the Russian space station Mir, transported there on the Endeavour space shuttle in January 1998. He also flew on Discovery in March 2001 on the mission that took the second resident crew to the International Space Station, and undertook a space walk lasting more than six hours. He is assigned to the first mission to fly since the Columbia space shuttle disaster in February 2003, with the Discovery to be launched between 6 March to 18 April 2005. Thomas joined NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1989 and was selected as an astronaut in 1992.