LONGUEUIL, Que. - Astronaut Chris Hadfield will become the first Canadian to command the International Space Station, Gary Goodyear, the federal minister of state for science and technology announced Thursday at the Longueuil headquarters of the Canadian Space Agency.
Hadfield, 51, a former fighter jet pilot and native of Sarnia, Ont., will fly aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket to the space station 350 kilometres above the Earth and live there for six months starting in December 2012, Goodyear said.
He will take command of the space station during the second half of his six-month mission.
Hadfield is a natural for the post since he trained as the backup to Bob Thirsk, who was the first Canadian to live on the station for a long duration - six months - in 2008.
Thirsk was the station's medical doctor.
Hadfield described the orbiting space station as basically "an apartment in space," but one that requires a great deal of maintenance, both inside and through space walks.
The crew's mission will be to conduct several experiments on board designed by scientists from around the world.
"It's a tremendous place to look at the universe," Hadfield said. "It's a tremendous platform for us to watch the changes on our own planet."
But Hadfield said leading the crew and bringing them back safely to Earth is the ultimate goal.
"The humanity of it really interests me, to do something really extraordinary," he said.
Chosen to be part of the astronaut corps in 1992, Hadfield flew on the space shuttle as a mission specialist in 1995 and in 2001.
Hadfield, a married father of three, is a civilian CSA astronaut, having retired as a colonel from the Canadian air force 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 there from 2006 to 2008.
In addition, Hadfield was NASA's chief `CapCom,' the voice of mission control to astronauts in orbit, for 25 space shuttle missions. From 1996 to 2000, he co-ordinated astronaut activities as the chief astronaut for the CSA.
Montreal Gazette
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