Astronauts
Image Credit: NASA

Astronauts

Find out more about the Astronauts we have had the honour of welcoming to the National Space Centre.

Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin
Buzz excerpt
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Charles Moss “Charlie” Duke, Jr
Charles Moss “Charlie” Duke, Jr
Charles Moss "Charlie" Duke, Jr. (born October 3, 1935), (Brig Gen, USAF, Ret.), is an American engineer, retired U.S. Air Force officer, test pilot, and a former astronaut for NASA.

As Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 16 in 1972, he became the tenth and youngest person to walk on the Moon. A former test pilot, Duke has logged 4,147 hours flying time, which includes 3,632 hours in jet aircraft; and 265 hours in space, plus 20 hours and 15 minutes of extravehicular activity.

A resident of New Braunfels, Texas, he is currently Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.
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Ronnie Walter Cunningham
Ronnie Walter Cunningham
Ronnie Walter Cunningham (born March 16, 1932), (Col, USMCR, Ret.), better known as Walt Cunningham, is a retired American astronaut.

In 1968, he was the Lunar Module Pilot on the Apollo 7 mission. He was NASA's third civilian astronaut (after Neil Armstrong and Elliot See), and has also been a fighter pilot, physicist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, author of The All-American Boys, lecturer, and host of the radio show Lift-off to Logic.

Walter Cunningham attended UCLA.
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Chris Austin Hadfield
Chris Austin Hadfield
Chris Austin Hadfield OC OOnt MSC CD (born 29 August 1959) is a retired Canadian astronaut who was the first Canadian to walk in space.

An engineer and former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot, Hadfield has flown two space shuttle missions and served as commander of the International Space Station.  He first flew in space aboard STS-74 in November 1995 as a mission specialist. During the mission he visited the Russian space station Mir. In April 2001 he flew again on STS-100 and visited the International Space Station (ISS), where he walked in space and helped to install the Canadarm2. In December 2012 he flew for a third time aboard Soyuz TMA-07M and joined Expedition 34 on the ISS.

In December 2012 he flew for a third time aboard Soyuz TMA-07M and joined Expedition 34 on the ISS.
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Michael Foale
Michael Foale
Michael Foale (CBE, PhD) was born 6 January 1957. He is a British-American astrophysicist and former NASA astronaut.

He is a veteran of six Space Shuttle missions and extended missions on both Mir and the International Space Station. He was the first Briton to perform a space walk, and until 17 April 2008, he held the record for most time spent in space by a US citizen: 374 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes.

He still holds the cumulative-time-in-space record for a UK citizen.
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Piers Sellers
Piers Sellers
Piers Sellers, (11 April 1955 - 23 December 2016) was a British-American meteorologist, a NASA astronaut and veteran of three space shuttle missions.

Sellers attended Cranbrook School, Cranbrook, Kent, United Kingdom, until 1973, and achieved a bachelor’s degree in ecological science from the University of Edinburgh in 1976. In 1981 he gained a doctorate in biometeorology from the University of Leeds. In 2011, Sellers retired from the NASA Astronaut Corps.

In January 2016, he revealed that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Sellers died 23 December 2016 at the age of 61

Sellers dedicated the final years of his life to Earth sciences - " As an astronaut, I spacewalked 220 miles above the Earth. Floating alongside the International Space Station, I watched hurricanes cartwheel across oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Equator. From this God’s-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is. I’m hopeful for its future."
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Dr Helen Sharman
Dr Helen Sharman
Dr Helen Sharman (OBE, FRSC) was born 30 May 1963. She is a British chemist who became the first Briton in space and the first woman to visit the Mir space station in 1991

Sharman was born in Grenoside, Sheffield (where she attended Grenoside Junior and Infant School), later moving to Greenhill. After studying at Jordanthorpe Comprehensive, she received a BSc in chemistry at the University of Sheffield in 1984 and a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London.

She worked as a research and development technologist for GEC in London and later as a chemist for Mars Incorporated dealing with flavouring properties of chocolate.
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Dr. Mamoru Mohri
Dr. Mamoru Mohri
Dr. Mamoru Mohri was born in 1948 in Yoichi, Hokkaido. His field of study included vacuum science, surface science, material science, and nuclear fusion.

Selected by the National Space Development Agency of Japan (now referred to as the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA) in 1985, he flew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor on the STS-47 (Spacelab-J) mission in 1992. He was the first Japanese astronaut who performed Japan-US joint investigation in space. Dr. Mohri also conducted a "Space Classroom", which was broadcasted live to the children in Japan. Dr. Mohri was qualified as NASA Mission Specialist (MS) in 1998 and flew for a second time aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor on the STS-99 mission in 2000.

During the mission, he mapped more than 47 million miles of the Earth's surface to develop a 3-D rendition of our planet. Also on the STS-99 mission, for the first time ever, he acquired earth observation data with a High-Definition Television (HDTV) Camera.
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Guion Stewart Bluford, Jr.
Guion Stewart Bluford, Jr.
Guion Stewart Bluford, Jr., Ph.D. (born November 22, 1942), (Col, USAF, Ret.), is an American aerospace engineer, retired U.S. Air Force officer and fighter pilot, and former NASA astronaut, who was the first African American in space.

Before becoming an astronaut, he was an officer in the U.S. Air Force, where he remained while assigned to NASA, rising to the rank of Colonel. He participated in four Space Shuttle flights between 1983 and 1992.

In 1983, as a member of the crew of the Orbiter Challenger on the mission STS-8, he became the first African American in space as well as the second person of African ancestry in space, after Cuban cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez.
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Bernard Anthony Harris, Jr.
Bernard Anthony Harris, Jr.
Bernard Anthony Harris, Jr. (born June 26, 1956 in Temple, Texas) is a former NASA astronaut. On February 9, 1995, Harris became the first African American to perform an extra-vehicular activity (spacewalk), during the second of his two Space Shuttle flights.

He then joined NASA Johnson Space Center as a clinical scientist and flight surgeon. His duties included clinical investigations of space adaptation and the development of countermeasures for extended duration space flight. Dr. Harris was assigned as a mission specialist on STS-55, Spacelab D-2, in August 1991.  During this flight, Dr. Harris logged over 239 hours and 4,164,183 miles in space.

Most recently, Dr. Harris was the Payload Commander on STS-63 (February 2-11, 1995), the first flight of the new joint Russian-American Space Program.
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Pamela Anne Melroy
Pamela Anne Melroy
Pamela Anne Melroy (born September 17, 1961) is a retired United States Air Force officer and a former NASA astronaut. She served as pilot on Space Shuttle missions STS-92 and STS-112 and commanded mission STS-120 before leaving the agency in August 2009.

After serving as Deputy Program Manager, Space Exploration Initiatives with Lockheed Martin, Melroy joined the Federal Aviation Administration in 2011, where she was a senior technical advisor and director of field operations for the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation.

In 2013, she left the FAA and joined DARPA as Deputy Director of the Tactical Technology Office.
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Jeffrey Shears “Bones” Ashby
Jeffrey Shears “Bones” Ashby
Jeffrey Shears "Bones" Ashby (born June 16, 1954) is a former American naval aviator and astronaut, a veteran of three Space Shuttle missions.

He is a retired Captain in the U.S. Navy. Ashby was selected as an astronaut candidate in December 1994 at age 40. He was initially scheduled to be the pilot on STS-85 in 1997 but was replaced due to a family illness. He piloted space shuttle missions STS-93 in July 1999 and STS-100 in April 2001, and commanded mission STS-112 in October 2002.  His first flight, aboard Columbia, deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory and was the first U.S. space mission commanded by a female, Eileen Collins. Ashby's latter two flights aboard Endeavour and Atlantis were the sixth and ninth assembly missions for the International Space Station.

He has travelled over 11 million miles, flown 436 orbits around the Earth, and logged over 660 hours (27.5 days) in space.
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Sandra Hall Magnus
Sandra Hall Magnus
Sandra Hall Magnus (born October 30, 1964) is an American engineer and a NASA astronaut.

Magnus was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1996 and flew her first space mission, STS-112, in October 2002 as a mission specialist. Magnus served as Flight Engineer on board the International Space Station as part of Expedition 18. Magnus was a Mission Specialist on STS-126 for the trip to the station, which launched on November 14, 2008. She served as Mission Specialist on STS-119 when it returned on March 28, 2009. She was assigned to the crew of STS-135, the final mission of the Space Shuttle.

She logged 133 days in orbit, leaving the NASA Astronaut corps to become the Executive Director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
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David Alexander Wolf
David Alexander Wolf
David Alexander Wolf (born August 23, 1956) is an American astronaut, medical doctor, electrical engineer. Wolf has been to space four times.

Three of his spaceflights were short-duration Space Shuttle missions, the first of which was STS-58 in 1993, and his most recent spaceflight was STS-127 in 2009. Wolf also took part in a long-duration mission aboard the Russian space station Mir which lasted 128 days, and occurred during Mir EO-24. He was brought to Mir aboard STS-86 in September 1997, and landed aboard STS-89 in January 1998. In total Wolf has logged more than 4,040 hours in space.

He is also a veteran of 7 spacewalks totalling 41hrs 17min in both Russian and American spacesuits.
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Fyodor Nikolayevich Yurchikhin
Fyodor Nikolayevich Yurchikhin
Fyodor Nikolayevich Yurchikhin (born 3 January 1959), is a Russian cosmonaut of Greek descent, engineer and RSC Energia test-pilot who has flown on three spaceflights.

His first spaceflight was a 10-day Space Shuttle mission STS-112. His second was a long-duration stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as a Flight Engineer for Expedition 15; for this mission he was launched in the Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft. He has undertaken two further long-duration stays aboard the ISS, as a crew member of Expedition 24 / 25. For this mission he was launched with the spacecraft Soyuz TMA-19, and he landed in November 2010, also with the TMA-19 spacecraft.

He served as Soyuz Commander for his fourth mission aboard Soyuz TMA-09M, as Flight Engineer for Expedition 36 and ISS Commander for Expedition 37.
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Mark Edward Kelly
Mark Edward Kelly
Mark Edward Kelly (born February 21, 1964) is a retired American astronaut, engineer and U.S. Navy Captain. He was selected to become a NASA Space Shuttle pilot in 1996 and flew his first mission in 2001 as pilot of STS-108.

He piloted STS-121 in 2006 and commanded STS-124 in 2008 and STS-134 in 2011. STS-134 was his final mission and the final mission of Space Shuttle Endeavour.  Kelly's identical twin brother, Scott Kelly, is also an astronaut and served as commander of International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 26. The Kelly brothers are the only twins and only siblings to have both travelled in space.

In 2015, his brother was selected to spend a year in space on the ISS. As such, the twin brothers will be studied to find differences between living on Earth and in space.
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Lisa Marie Nowak
Lisa Marie Nowak
Lisa Marie Nowak (née Caputo, born May 10, 1963) is an American former naval flight officer and NASA astronaut.

Born in Washington, D.C., she was selected by NASA in 1996 and qualified as a mission specialist in robotics.

Nowak flew aboard Space Shuttle Discovery during the STS-121 mission in July 2006, where she was responsible for operating the robotic arms of the shuttle and the International Space Station.
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Stephanie Diana Wilson
Stephanie Diana Wilson
Stephanie Diana Wilson (born September 27, 1966) is an American engineer and a NASA astronaut.

She flew on her first mission in space on board the Space Shuttle mission STS-121, and is the second African American woman to go into space, after Mae Jemison.  Wilson has flown on three shuttle missions. On STS-121, Wilson flew aboard as a mission specialist. She also flew on the STS-120 mission that delivered the Harmony connecting module to the International Space Station.

In April 2010, Wilson flew as a Mission Specialist on STS-131.
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Brian Duffy
Brian Duffy
Brian Duffy (born June 20, 1953, Boston, Massachusetts) is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and a former NASA astronaut.

He flew aboard four Space Shuttle missions. Duffy was the pilot on STS-45 Atlantis, the first of the ATLAS series of missions to address the atmosphere and its interaction with the Sun. He also was the pilot on STS-57 Endeavour and commanded a six-man crew on STS-72 Endeavour.

Duffy commanded a crew of seven on STS-92 Discovery in 2000 and is currently the Vice President and Associate Program Manager for the Lockheed Martin Corporation.
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Jeffrey Alan Hoffman
Jeffrey Alan Hoffman
Jeffrey Alan Hoffman, Ph.D. (born November 2, 1944) is an American former NASA astronaut and currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT.

Hoffman made five flights as a space shuttle astronaut, including the first mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993, when the orbiting telescope's flawed optical system was corrected. Trained as an astrophysicist, he also flew on 1990 Spacelab shuttle mission that featured the ASTRO-1 ultraviolet astronomical observatory in the shuttle's payload bay. Over the course of his five missions he logged more than 1,211 hours and 21.5 million miles in space.

He was also the first Jewish Astronaut, and the second Jewish man in space after Boris Volynov.
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Paolo Angelo Nespoli
Paolo Angelo Nespoli
Paolo Angelo Nespoli (Milan, 6 April 1957) is an Italian astronaut and engineer.

In 2007, he first traveled into space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery as a mission specialist of STS-120. In December 2010 he again traveled into space aboard the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft as an Expedition 26/27 flight engineer.  On 23 October 2007 Paolo launched on board STS-120 to the International Space Station; the Space Shuttle mission which delivered the Harmony module (formerly known as Node 2) to the International Space Station.

On 15 December 2010 Nespoli flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station with the Russian cosmonaut Dmitri Kondratyev and NASA’s astronaut Catherine Coleman.
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Donald Alan Thomas
Donald Alan Thomas
Donald Alan Thomas, Ph.D. (born May 6, 1955) is an American engineer and a former NASA astronaut.

Selected by NASA in January 1990, Dr. Thomas became an astronaut in July 1991. A veteran of four space flights, he logged over 1,040 hours in space. He was a mission specialist on STS-65 (July 8, 1994 – July 23, 1994), STS-70 (July 13, 1995 – July 22, 1995), STS-83 (April 4, 1997 – April 8, 1997) and STS-94 (July 1, 1997 – July 17, 1997). Initially assigned to the ISS Expedition 6 crew, his flight assignment withdrawal resulted from a medical issue affecting long duration space flight qualifications.

In his last assignment he served as the International Space Station Program Scientist overseeing NASA experiments performed on the ISS.
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Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev
Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev
Buzz excerpt
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George Driver “Pinky” Nelson
George Driver “Pinky” Nelson
George Driver "Pinky" Nelson, Ph.D. (born July 13, 1950) is an American physicist, astronomer, science educator, and a former NASA astronaut.

A veteran of three space flights, Nelson served aboard STS-41-C in 1984, STS-61C in 1986 and STS-26 in 1988. He has logged a total of 411 hours in space, including 10 hours of EVA flight time. STS-26 Discovery was the first flown after the Challenger accident.

During the four-day flight, the crew successfully deployed the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-C) and operated eleven mid-deck science experiments.
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