Portrait of Dan Bursch Courtesy of NASA

Dan Bursch is an American astronaut who was born on July 25, 1957 in Pennsylvania. Before he became an astronaut, Bursch was a pilot for the Navy. He has flown over 2500 hours on 35 different aircraft.

Bursch became an astronaut in 1990. He has made three spaceflights, spending over 746 hours in space.

In 1993, Bursch flew aboard shuttle Discovery on a 10-day mission. The mission included the deployment of two satellites and several German experiments. Bursch studied the Earth's environment aboard the Space Radar Lab-2 in 1994.

In 1996, Bursch flew aboard Spacelab-4. He performed several experiments on biotechnology and materials processing.