Portrait of Curtis Brown Courtesy of NASA

Curtis Brown is an American astronaut who was born on March 11, 1956 in North Carolina. Before he became an astronaut, Brown was a pilot for the Air Force. He has flown over 3700 hours in jet aircraft.

Brown became an astronaut in 1987. He has made three spaceflights spending over 693 hours in space.

In 1992, Brown flew aboard Spacelab-J. This was a cooperative mission with the U.S. and Japan. In 1994, Brown flew aboard shuttle Atlantis on a mission studying planet Earth.

In 1996, Brown was part of mission STS-77, which set a record number of rendezvous sequences with four different satellites. Brown's next scheduled mission is aboard STS-85 in July 1997. This mission will study the Earth's atmosphere.