Piers Sellers

Piers Sellers, (11 April 1955 – 23 December 2016) was a British-American meteorologist, a NASA astronaut and veteran of three space shuttle missions.

Sellers attended Cranbrook School, Cranbrook, Kent, United Kingdom, until 1973, and achieved a bachelor’s degree in ecological science from the University of Edinburgh in 1976. In 1981 he gained a doctorate in biometeorology from the University of Leeds. In 2011, Sellers retired from the NASA Astronaut Corps.

In January 2016, he revealed that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Sellers died 23 December 2016 at the age of 61

Sellers dedicated the final years of his life to Earth sciences – ” As an astronaut, I spacewalked 220 miles above the Earth. Floating alongside the International Space Station, I watched hurricanes cartwheel across oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Equator. From this God’s-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is. I’m hopeful for its future.”