About David M. Brown
David McDowell Brown was a United States Navy captain and NASA astronaut. He died on his first spaceflight, when the Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-107) disintegrated during orbital reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. Brown became an astronaut in 1996 but had not served on a space mission prior to the Columbia disaster. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
Biography source:
Wikipedia
