A veteran space shuttle astronaut, Joe Tanner, has left NASA to accept a position in the private sector. Tanner flew on four space shuttle missions and performed seven spacewalks.

"Joe has played an extremely important role for both our office and the agency as a whole throughout his many years with NASA," said Steve Lindsey, astronaut office chief. "Not only has he performed critical roles in each of his four shuttle missions, from servicing the Hubble Telescope to assembly work on the International Space Station, but his leadership and expertise have been invaluable resources to us on the ground as well. He will be missed."

Tanner's spaceflight experience includes more than 1,069 hours in space, with more than 46 hours spent spacewalking.

Selected as an astronaut in 1992, Tanner first flew aboard the space shuttle Atlantis on the STS-66 Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science-3 mission in 1994. He then made two spacewalks to service the Hubble Space Telescope on STS-82 in 1997. Tanner's third mission was STS-97 in 2000 on Endeavour's flight to the International Space Station to install the first set of U.S. solar arrays, during which he did three spacewalks. On his last flight, Tanner's crew installed another set of solar arrays, continuing construction of the station on STS-115 in 2006. He conducted two spacewalks.

FMI: www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/tanner.html, www.nasa.gov