Chris Hadfield

Chris Austin Hadfield ( born August 29, 1959 in Sarnia, Ontario Province, Canada ) is a Canadian astronaut.

Professional career

In 1978, Hadfield in the Canadian armed forces and completed after the bachelor 's degree in 1982 in mechanical engineering at the Royal Military College in Kingston ( Ontario) the pilot course at the Canadian Air Force. There he was stopped from 1985 for three years for NORAD and flew the CF- 18 fighter aircraft. In addition, Hadfield trained as a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base. In 1992, he received a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Tennessee.

Astronauts activity

1992 Hadfield competed successfully against 5330 competitors for the Canadian Space Program and then moved on to training at the Johnson Space Center of NASA. While 25 shuttle missions Hadfield as a senior spokesman connection ( Capcom ) was used. From 1996 to 2000 he was head of the CSA astronaut.

On 12 September 1995 Hadfield launched with the Space Shuttle Atlantis on his first mission (STS- 74) into space. In this mission, the coupling module, designed and built in Russia SDM was taken to the Mir space station. In addition, the space station was supplied with supplies.

On his second space flight launched Hadfield on 19 April 2001 with the Space Shuttle Endeavour on mission STS -100. This flight to the International Space Station ( ISS) Canadarm2 robotic arm, the Canadian and the first time the logistics module Raffaello was carried. In two spacewalks Hadfield mounted together with Scott Parazynski the robotic arm on the ISS.

Then was Hadfield 2001-2003 the Director of Operations at NASA at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia.

2003 Hadfield retired from the Canadian Air Force after 25 years of military service and was then civilian astronaut of the CSA. From 2003 to 2006 he was head of the robotics department until 2008, Head of ISS Operations at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. In the period from May 2007 to May 2009, he trained as a backup by Robert Thirsk for the ISS Expedition 21 In May 2010, Hadfield served as commander of the NEEMO 14 mission in the underwater laboratory Aquarius.

In December 2012, Hadfield launched with Soyuz TMA- 07M to the ISS, to work as a flight engineer of ISS Expedition 34. On March 15, 2013, he took over the first Canadian to command of the ISS as part of the ISS Expedition 35 The return to Earth was made on 14 May 2013.

For July 3, 2013 Hadfield left the CSA to pursue new opportunities.

Hadfield in the media

After his command over at the ISS media interest grew steadily at Hadfield and his work. Queen Elizabeth sent him a personal message, William Shatner appeared on a live circuit with Hadfield as Captain Kirk in contact and in social networks is the response to hadfields news from the space station very large. Alone on the micro-blogging site Twitter to it to more than one million people follow (as of June 2013). On the occasion of his return flight to Earth from ISS Expedition 34/35 a eingesungene of Hadfield cover version of David Bowie's Space Oddity and a rotated on the space station music video were released on the Internet. Within four days, this clip has been viewed over 12 million times.

Private

Hadfield grew up on a corn farm in southern Ontario and developed at an early age an interest in flying - at the age of nine, he came up with the idea of becoming an astronaut when he saw the Apollo Moon landing on television. Chris Hadfield is married and has three adult children.

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