Jay Clark Buckey, Jr. (born June 6, 1956, in New York City) is an American physician and astronaut who flew aboard one Space Shuttle mission (STS-90) as a Payload Specialist.[1] Buckey briefly ran for the Democratic nomination to challenge New Hampshire Senator John E. Sununu, a first term Republican, when he was up for re-election in 2008. Buckey withdrew from the race when former Governor Jeanne Shaheen entered the race.[2]
In 1998 he was a Payload Specialist aboard NASA Space Shuttle flight STS-90 as part of the Neurolab mission from April 17 to May 3, 1998. Aboard the Neurolab Mission, Buckey was the Payload Specialist for the experiment "Cardiovascular Adaptation to Zero-Gravity" and assisted with other Spacelab Life Sciences experiments. During the 16-day Spacelab flight, the seven person crew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia served as both experiment subjects and operators for 26 individual life science experiments focusing on the effects of microgravity on the brain and nervous system. The STS-90 flight orbited the Earth 256 times, covered 6.3 million miles, and logged him over 381 hours in space.[3]
In 2018, Buckey was part of research using virtual reality, at the Australian Antarctic Division's Mawson Station, wherein the expeditioners used VR headsets to view Australian beach scenes, European nature scenes, and North American nature scenes of forests and urban environments, which were different from the isolation of the whiteness and silence of Antarctica. The research will inform psychological techniques to support long duration spaceflight such as for astronauts going to Mars.[4]
