Ed Campion
Headquarters, Washington              August 18, 1995
(Phone:  202/358-1778)

Kyle Herring
Johnson Space Center, Houston
(Phone:  713/483-5111)


RELEASE:  95-142

ASTRONAUT BAGIAN JOINS EPA

    Two-time Space Shuttle astronaut Dr. James P. Bagian, has 
left the astronaut corps for a position with the Environmental 
Protection Agency's National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions 
Laboratory in Ann Arbor, MI.

    Bagian has been conducting biomedical research and 
practicing clinical medicine at William Beaumont Hospital in 
Royal Oak, MI, since early 1994 while on a leave of absence 
from NASA.

     "The decision to leave NASA was a very difficult one for 
me,"  Bagian said.  "Working for the EPA gives me the 
opportunity to participate in the Mission to Planet Earth -- 
just from a different vantage point."

    Bagian was born in Philadelphia and joined NASA in 1978 as 
a flight surgeon and research medical officer.  He was selected 
to be an astronaut with the class of 1980.

    His first Shuttle flight was in March 1989 aboard Discovery 
on the STS-29 mission to deploy a Tracking and Data Relay 
Satellite.  His second flight in June 1991 aboard Columbia was 
the first dedicated to life sciences research.  Experiments 
conducted on STS-40 explored how the heart, blood vessels, 
lungs, kidneys and hormone-secreting glands respond to 
microgravity.

                     -end-

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