Milestones Icon: Vance Brand

Vance Brand, born and raised in Longmont, logged 746 hours in space and commanded three space shuttle missions during a 41-year career with NASA.

The former astronaut was born in 1931 in Longmont and graduated from Longmont High School.

His first space flight was in 1975, as Apollo command module pilot on the Apollo-Soyuz test project mission, the historic meeting in space between American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts.

“When we went to Russia for the first time in the early 1970s, it was the peak of the Cold War,” Brand recalled. “We were a bit apprehensive, but we didn’t want to show it. We were met at the plane by smiling Russian people carrying flowers for us. After that, both sides were bending over backward to accommodate each other and make the cooperative flight work.”

In 1982, Brand commanded the first space shuttle flight aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia.

“It wasn’t very operational,” he said. “We had around 50 flight test objectives that were continued from the first four flights. It was operational from the standpoint that we had a crew of four instead of a crew of two, and it was the first mission to deploy commercial satellites into geosynchronous orbit from a shuttle.”

Brand also commanded space shuttle missions in 1984 and 1990.

The 1990 space shuttle mission was aboard the STS-35 Columbia. The nine-day mission was the first space shuttle flight devoted to astronomy, observing stars and other celestial objects. When he landed at Edwards Air Force Base on Dec. 10, he had logged 746 hours, more than 31 days and two hours in space during his four missions.

He began his 41-year career at NASA after receiving bachelor of science degrees in business and aeronautical engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1953 and 1960, respectively, and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1964.

He was a commissioned officer and naval aviator with the U.S. Marine Corps from 1953 to 1957, a flight test engineer for Lockheed Martin Corp. from 1960 to 1966 and graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Flight School in 1963.

He left his office as astronaut in 1992 and worked at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio for two years before moving to California, where he became the associate center director for programs at Dryden Flight Research Center.

Brand believes NASA has great possibilities for the future. He thinks the agency will find ways to explore the solar system and venture even farther into space. “It’s hard to picture now, but there will be breakthroughs,” he said.

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