Christopher Austin Hadfield Jr (born August 29, 1959) is a retired Canadian-NASA astronaut, engineer, fighter pilot, musician, and writer. The first Canadian to perform extravehicular activity in outer space, he has flown two Space Shuttle missions and also served as commander of the International Space Station (ISS). Prior to his career as an astronaut, he served in the Canadian Armed Forces for 25 years as an Air Command fighter pilot.
Hadfield has cited part of his career inspiration to have come to him as a child, when he watched the first crewed Moon landing by American spaceflight Apollo 11 on television. He attended high school in Oakville and Milton in southern Ontario, and earned his glider pilot licence as a member of the Royal Canadian Air Cadets. After enlisting in the Canadian Armed Forces, he earned an engineering degree at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario. Hadfield learned to fly various types of aircraft in the military and eventually became a test pilot, flying several experimental planes. As part of an exchange program with the United States Navy and United States Air Force, he obtained a master's degree in aviation systems at the University of Tennessee Space Institute.
In 1992, Hadfield was accepted into the Canadian astronaut program by the Canadian Space Agency. He first flew in space in November 1995 as a mission specialist aboard STS-74, visiting the Russian space station Mir. He flew again in April 2001 on STS-100, when he visited the ISS and walked in space to help install Canadarm2. In December 2012, he flew for a third time aboard Soyuz TMA-07M to join Expedition 34 on the ISS. When Expedition 34 ended in March 2013, Hadfield became the commander of the ISS as part of Expedition 35, responsible for a crew of five astronauts and helping to run dozens of scientific experiments dealing with the impact of low gravity on human biology. During this mission, he chronicled life onboard the space station by taking pictures of Earth and posting them on various social media platforms. He was a guest on television news and talk shows and gained popularity by playing the ISS's guitar in space. Hadfield returned to Earth in May 2013, when the mission ended. He announced his retirement shortly after returning, capping a 35-year-long career as a military pilot and astronaut. He has five published books including his autobiography, the NYT-bestseller An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth.
Early and personal life[]
Chris Hadfield was inspired to become an astronaut shoryly before his 10th birthday while watching the Apollo missions. Years later, he attended and graduated from Milton District High School in 1977. He had flight in his blood from an early age: his father, Roger, was a pilot with Air Canada and also flew his own aerobatic plane. Chris and his brothers, David and Philip, were air cadets. His brothers went on to become airline pilots. Hadfield opted for the military, graduating in 1982 from the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, with a degree in mechanical engineering. Hadfield received a Master of Science in aviation systems from the University of Tennessee Space Institute in 1992.
In 1981, Chris Hadfield married Helene Walter (now Hadfield), who has worked in a variety of fields in addition to studying accounting and law. The couple met as students at White Oaks Secondary School in Oakville, Ontario. They have three grown children: Kyle, Evan and Kristin. Hadfield’s hobbies include various sports, music, and writing.
NASA Career[]
Hadfield was selected to become one of four new Canadian astronauts from a field of 5,330 applicants in June 1992. Three of those four (Dafydd Williams, Julie Payette and Hadfield) have flown in space. The fourth candidate, Michael McKay, resigned as an astronaut in 1995. Hadfield was assigned by the CSA to the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas in August, where he addressed technical and safety issues for Shuttle Operations Development, contributed to the development of the glass shuttle cockpit, and supported shuttle launches at the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida. In addition, Hadfield was NASA's chief CAPCOM (capsule communicator), the voice of mission control to astronauts in orbit, for 25 Space Shuttle missions. From 1996 to 2000, he represented CSA astronauts and coordinated their activities as the chief astronaut for the CSA.
He was the director of operations for NASA at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC) in Star City, Russia from 2001 until 2003. Some of his duties included co-ordination and direction of all International Space Station crew activities in Russia, oversight of training and crew support staff, as well as policy negotiation with the Russian Space Program and other International Partners. He also trained and became fully qualified to be a flight engineer cosmonaut in the Soyuz TMA spacecraft, and to perform spacewalks in the Russian Orlan spacesuit.
Hadfield is a civilian CSA astronaut, having retired as a colonel from the Canadian Armed Forces in 2003 after 25 years of military service. He was chief of robotics for the NASA Astronaut Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas from 2003 to 2006 and was chief of International Space Station Operations from 2006 to 2008. In that time he had worked as an engineer at the Michoud Assembly Facility, to which a part of it is named in his honor. In 2008 and 2009, he trained as a back-up to Robert Thirsk on Expedition 21. In May 2010, Hadfield served as the commander of the NEEMO 14 mission aboard the Aquarius underwater laboratory, living and working underwater for fourteen days. NASA announced in 2010 that Hadfield would become the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station, leading Expedition 35 after its launch on December 19, 2012. His craft docked with the station on December 21. He remained on the station for five months, transferring control to Pavel Vinogradov and departing on May 13, 2013.
In June 2013, one month after completing his third trip to space, Hadfield announced his retirement from the Canadian Space Agency, effective July 3, 2013. Hadfield stated that after living primarily in the United States since the 1980s for his career, he would be moving back to Canada, "making good on a promise I made my wife nearly 30 years ago—that yes, eventually, we would be moving back to Canada." He noted that he plans to pursue private interests outside government there. Hadfield is enthusiastic about the prospects for a crewed mission to Mars, and when asked in 2011 if he would consider being the first to visit even if the journey to Mars were one-way, he said "I would be honoured to be given the opportunity."
Honours[]
In 2003, Chris Hadfield was featured on a postage stamp as part of a series celebrating Canadian astronauts. In 2006, the Royal Canadian Mint commemorated Hadfield’s 2001 spacewalks on silver and gold coins. Public schools in Bradford, Milton and Mississauga, Ontario, are named after him, as are asteroid number 14143, a NASA rocket factory, and the Sarnia Chris Hadfield Airport. In addition to these tributes, he has earned many other honours throughout his career.