Death of French Astronaut Jean-Jacques Favier

French astronaut Jean-Jacques Favier, who was the sixth Frenchman sent into space when he participated in a flight aboard the American shuttle "Columbia," has passed away, as announced by the French National Centre for Space Studies today. The French space agency selected Favier in 1985, who studied physics and engineering while working as a research engineer at the Atomic Energy Commission. In 1995, he was appointed as a specialist to conduct experiments in the "Spacelab" laboratory on the American shuttle. He spent 16 days, 21 hours, and 48 minutes in orbit from June 20 to July 7, 1996, fourteen years after Jean-Loup Chrétien, the first Frenchman to participate in a spaceflight aboard the Russian "Soyuz" spacecraft.