Jean-Jacques Favier


Jean-Jacques Favier is a French engineer and a former CNES astronaut who flew aboard the STS-78 NASA Space Shuttle mission. Favier was due to fly aboard the destroyed Columbia mission in 2003, but later signed out of the mission. Jean-Jacques Favier has been Deputy Director for Space Technology and Deputy Director for Advanced Concepts and Strategy at CNES, Director of the Solidification Laboratory at the French Atomic Energy Commission and Research Program Director at the International Space University.

Personal data

Born in Kehl, Germany, he later married Michèle Jean. They have four children. He enjoys downhill skiing, tennis, wind-surfing, and archeology.

Education

Favier was the Advisor to the Director of the Material Science Research Center at the French Atomic Energy Commission and was detached to CNES. He proposed the MEPHISTO program, a collaborative project between the French Space Agency and NASA, and has developed many other scientific projects in collaboration with the United States since 1985. He was the principal investigator for a MEPHISTO materials processing experiment, which made its debut on the United States Microgravity Payload in 1992 and 1994. He became a CNES payload specialist in 1985. He has been principal investigator of more than ten space experiments in collaboration with ESA, NASA, and the Russian Space Agency.
Favier was assigned as an alternate payload specialist on STS-65/IML-2, the second International Migrogravity Laboratory mission, and supported the mission as a Crew Interface Coordinator from the Payload Operations Control Center at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Favier flew on STS-78 and logged over 405 hours in space. STS-78 Columbia was a 16-day Life and Microgravity Spacelab mission. It included studies sponsored by ten nations and five space agencies, was the first mission to combine both a full microgravity studies agenda and a comprehensive life science investigation, and served as a model for future studies on board the International Space Station. STS-78 orbited the Earth 271 times, covering 7 million miles in 405 hours, 48 minutes.
Favier is a member of the board of advisors of the International Space University and also the chair of the research steering committee. He is co-founder of remote imaging company called "Blue Planet", aimed at building a constellation of micro-satellites which image with a 1-meter resolution