Julie Payette

• STS -96 ( 1999)
• STS- 127 (2009)

Julie Payette, OC, CQ ( born October 20, 1963 in Montreal, Quebec ) is a Canadian astronaut.

Studies and scientific activity

Payette went to Montreal in the elementary and secondary school. With a scholarship she succeeded in 1980 recording on the United World College of the Atlantic in the UK, where two years later she graduated acquired. Back in Canada, she studied at the Faculty of Engineering at McGill University in Montreal engineering and received a bachelor's degree in 1986 with honors.

At IBM Canada Payette took then for two years a position as a systems engineer at before in the province of Ontario continued her studies at the University of Toronto. In 1990, she earned a master's degree in computer science and then went to the IBM Research Laboratory in Zurich ( Switzerland ). As a visiting scholar, she worked on automatic speech recognition for computers. In 1992 she returned to Canada and conducted research in January in Montreal at Bell - Northern Research in this field.

Astronauts activity

As the Canadian Space Agency ( CSA) in the early 1990s sought new astronauts, who applied 5,330 interested parties. After half a year of tests and interviews remained four candidates were selected in June 1992. Julie Payette was the only woman in this Auwahlgruppe.

Following basic training, she worked at the main Canadian contribution to the International Space Station, the robotic arms, and started a CSA Group, which deals with the relationship between humans and computers in space. They also made ​​1996 its pilots and the diving license. She learned the Russian language and also speaks fluent French and English, mastered Spanish, Italian and German.

Together with her colleague Steve MacLean took Payette at the Johnson Space Center (JSC ) in autumn 1996 at the training astronauts NASA part. She was trained with the 16th U.S. astronaut group for mission specialist.

Immediately thereafter, Payette was nominated for her first space flight, they took on board the Space Shuttle Discovery in May / June 1999. STS -96 brought several tons of equipment to the ISS, which were needed for its strengthening. The Canadian served on this mission the robotic arm of the space shuttle.

Then Payette worked as a contact of Canadian astronauts and represented the CSA against NASA, Roscosmos and ESA. From 2000 to 2008, she stood in front of the astronaut corps in Canada.

In February 2008, Payette was assigned to her second space flight. Under the command of Mark Polansky, she participated in the mission STS -127, were brought to the ISS 's part of the Japanese Kibo module. The launch took place after several shifts on 15 July 2009, the landing on July 31, 2009.

After the CSA

On July 15, 2013 Payette took a post in the government directors Montreal Science Centre. At the same time, she was Vice -President of the state real estate company Canada Lands Company.

Private

Payette, who is married to the test pilots Billie Flynn and has two children, loves classical music. She sang in front of their space in the career of the Chamber Choir Symphony Orchestra Montreal, the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra Choir in Toronto and during their stay in Switzerland in the Piacere Vocale in Basel.

In 2010 she was one of the bearers of the Olympic flag at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.