Biography

He and his wife had two daughters and four sons: Susan Nancy, Stephanie Brand Lowery, Patrick Richard, Kevin Stephen, Erik Ryan, and Dane Vance.

Brand again commanded Columbia on the thirty-eighth flight of the Shuttle, this time with a crew of seven. The night launch on December 2, 1990 started a 9-day mission devoted to round-the-clock observations of stars and other celestial objects.

Brand commanded the Challenger on the tenth flight of the Space Shuttle on February 3, 1984. His crew included Commander Robert Gibson, pilot, and three mission specialists, Captain Bruce McCandless II, Dr. Ron McNair, and Lieutant Colonel Robert Stewart. The flight saw McCandless and Stewart performing two spectacular extravehicular activities.

Brand was commander of Columbia for the first fully operational flight of the Shuttle Transportation System, which launched on November 11, 1982.

His first space flight (July 15, 1975) was as Apollo command module pilot on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission. This flight resulted in the historic meeting in space between American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts.