Commander Chris Hadfield
Former Astronaut and Commander of the ISS
Chris Hadfield is a former astronaut and commander of the International Space Station. He was the first Canadian to walk in space.
Raised on a farm in Ontario, Canada, Chris had dreamed of becoming an astronaut ever since watching the Apollo 11 moon landing at just 10 years old. After high school, he joined the Canadian Armed Forces and earned an engineering degree at Royal Military College. During his time in the Air Force he worked as a fighter pilot and a test pilot; flying over 70 different types of aircraft and performing research work for NASA.
In 1992, the Canadian Space Agency selected Chris for their astronaut program. After several years of training, he took his first space flight aboard STS-74, a Space Shuttle Atlantis mission to the Russian space station Mir in November 1995.
Since then, Chris has logged nearly 4,000 hours in space; working aboard the ISS in 2001 and again in 2012/2013 when he became commander.
During his time in space, he has broken into Mir with a Swiss army knife, has helped run hundreds of scientific experiments, been temporarily blinded while clinging to the outside of the ISS, and has become a YouTube sensation with his performance of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ in space.
The secret to Chris Hadfield's success, and survival, is an unconventional philosophy he learned at NASA: prepare for the worst…and enjoy every moment of it.
Shortly after returning to Earth in May 2013, he announced his retirement, bringing a 35-year career as a military pilot and an astronaut to a close.
