Leroy Chiao
- STS -65 ( 1994)
- STS -72 ( 1996)
- STS -92 (2000)
- Soyuz TMA- 5 (2004/2005) ISS Expedition 10
Leroy Chiao (Chinese焦 立 中, pinyin Jiao Lizhong; born August 28, 1960 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States) is a former American astronaut.
Chiao was born in Wisconsin, the son of Chinese immigrants and grew from 1967 in California. His parents Tsu Tao Chiao and Cherry were in the late 1950s left the country of Taiwan to the United States in order to get a better education as a chemist.
1978 closed Chiao in the California town of Danville Monte Vista High School. At the University of California at Berkeley, he began studying for a chemical engineer and earned his bachelor's degree in 1983. Two years later, was followed on the campus of Santa Barbara, a master's and a doctoral degree in 1987.
As a chemist Chiao joined Hexcel for two years a position with one of the leading companies for new materials to. In cooperation with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, he developed mirror for future telescopes that are made entirely of polymers. In the spring of 1989 he moved to the famous Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. As a research engineer, he worked on new composites.
Astronauts activity
Of the total of 1945 candidates who had registered for the 13th astronaut group the U.S. space agency, 23 were selected and presented in January 1990. Chiao was one of 16 mission specialists who completed the one-year basic training in the summer of 1991. He had already volunteered for the 12th NASA group, however, had been dismissed at the beginning of the selection process. Before Chiao was nominated for his first space flight, he was dealing with the development of software for the shuttle computers.
From October 1992 he was preparing on STS- 65, a flight which was conducted in July 1994 with the U.S. space shuttle Columbia. Around seven dozen experiments in the fields of biology and materials science were during the 15-day Spacelab flight on the program.
A few months after its maiden flight Chiao was assigned to his next mission: STS -72 was the first shuttle flight of the year 1996, the team began a ten- months earlier, a Japanese satellite launched and continued for two days, the platform from ODST. . In preparation for the future International Space Station ( ISS) Chiao made two spacewalks ( EVAs ) to test new methods of work on the ISS.
Due to its experience in the two EVAs Chiao trained intensively from the summer of 1997 for construction - EVA at the space station and was nominated for the mission STS -92. The Discovery brought in October 2000, the lattice structure Z1 and the coupling adapter PMA -3 to the ISS. Responsibility for the necessary external works was in the hands of Chiao, who got himself twice and worked at the station.
Shortly after the eighth Chiao long-term ISS crew was assigned. As a substitute for Commander Foale he was preparing for a six-month stay in orbit. In autumn 2002, a year before the start of Foale, Chiao has been transferred his own command with ISS Expedition 10. Originally planned as a three -man crew, the ISS crews were reassembled after the Columbia disaster in February 2003 and only consisted of two men. Chiao formed with Flight Engineer Sharipov from Russia initially the backup crew of Expedition 9
In October 2004, both flew on Soyuz TMA -5 to the space station and worked there for six and a half months as the tenth crew and first crew, which consisted exclusively of Asians. Both astronauts left the ISS twice: end of January 2005 for seven and a half hours and two months later for six and a half hours. The return to Earth in April 2005.
Chiao, who is married to Karen Chiao since the fall of 2003, left after 15 years in December 2005, the U.S. space agency. He now teaches at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.