COLONEL CHRIS HADFIELD ~ ASTRONAUT

CONTRIBUTION SESSION AT PEARL HALL SEPTEMBER 2003

FAVOURITE CHILDREN’S BOOK ~ “The Black Stallion”

                                                              by Walter Farley

FAVOURITE FOLKSONG ~ “Big Smoke” by Dave Hadfield

LANGUAGES SPOKEN ~ English, French, and Russian

Colonel Chris Hadfield was born in Sarnia, and raised in Milton, Ontario.  Chris has been a farmer, a ski instructor, student, an engineer, fighter pilot, test pilot, and for the last 11 years, an astronaut at NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. He enjoys skiing, guitar, singing, riding, writing, running, volleyball and squash.  He is also a member of the Astronaut Rock-N-Roll Band MAX Q in which he sings and plays the bass and guitar.

His brothers and sisters in Canada are all musicians. 

Chris’s Special Message to the students at Pearl Hall Elementary during his visit was:

“I have sat for hours with people where we didn’t speak any words of the same language but we could sit and play guitar together for a whole night and laugh and tell jokes and communicate with music as a language. I had the chance to play onboard the ISS.  I brought a guitar up and played there…I’m really pleased that I had the chance to build those cultural bridges then…and to participate in the BCB Program, too.   I think you can build cultural bridges not just speaking a common tongue but through other ways as well… and music is a terrific way to do that.”

Colonel Hadfield was selected as one of four Canadian astronauts from a field of 5,330 in June 1992. He was assigned by the CSA to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas in August 1992. Colonel Hadfield was NASA's Chief CAPCOM, the voice of mission control to astronauts in orbit, for 25 space shuttle missions. He also served for 4 years as the Chief Astronaut for the Canadian Space Agency.

From 2001 through 2003 Colonel Hadfield was in Star City, Russia as NASA’s Director of Operations at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre. As NASA’s lead representative his work included coordination and direction of all 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.

In November 1995, Colonel Hadfield served as Mission Specialist #1 on STS-74, served as Mission Specialist #1 on STS-100, International Space Station assembly Flight 6A. In April 2001, the crew of Space Shuttle Endeavour delivered and installed the new Canadian-built Robot Arm, Canadarm2, as well as the Italian-made resupply module Raffaello.

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