Steven R. Nagel, a former astronaut who flew on four space shuttle flights, died on Thursday in Columbia, Mo. He was 67.

A friend, Ed Reinholtz, said the cause was cancer.

Mr. Nagel was a mission specialist during a Discovery flight in June 1985 and the pilot aboard the Challenger in October 1985. He was commander on his last two missions: an Atlantis flight in April 1991 and a 10-day trip on the Columbia in April 1993. The 1991 crew included Linda M. Godwin, an astronaut who later married Mr. Nagel.

Mr. Nagel was a test pilot for the Air Force before becoming an astronaut in 1979. He retired from the Air Force in 1995 and later worked as deputy director and deputy chief in two separate offices at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. He retired from NASA in 2011.

Steven Ray Nagel was born on Oct. 27, 1946, in Canton, Ill. He received a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Illinois in 1969, and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from California State University, Fresno, in 1978.