Jay C. Buckey

Dr. Jay Clark Buckey, Jr. (born June 6, 1956 in New York City) is an American astronaut, having flown aboard one space shuttle mission (STS-90) as a NASA Payload Specialist. Buckey, a Democrat, is running to challenge New Hampshire Senator John E. Sununu, a Republican, when he is up for re-election in 2008.

Education, activities
Buckey holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University (1977) and an M.D. from Cornell in 1981, interning at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and completing his residence at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Currently, Buckey is an Professor of Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. He was also a flight surgeon with the U.S. Air Force Reserve for 8 years.

Neurolab
In 1998 he was a Payload Specialist aboard NASA Space Shuttle flight STS-90 as part of the Neurolab mission from April 17 to May 3, 1998. Aboard the Neurolab Mission, Buckey was the Payload Specialist for the experiment "Cardiovascular Adaptation to Zero-Gravity" and assisted with other Spacelab Life Sciences experiments. During the 16-day Spacelab flight, the seven person crew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia served as both experiment subjects and operators for 26 individual life science experiments focusing on the effects of microgravity on the brain and nervous system. The STS-90 flight orbited the Earth 256 times, covered 6.3 million miles, and logged him over 381 hours in space.