Hadfield, Chris Austin (1959– )

Canadian astronaut. He is the chief astronaut for the Canadian Space Agency. In November 1995, he was the first Canadian to operate the robotic Canadarm while in orbit, during his first space shuttle flight on Atlantis. He also flew with the Endeavour mission in April 2001 to deliver Canadarm 2 to the International Space Station. During the same mission he performed two space walks to unfold the device. From 2001 to 2003, he was NASA's director of operations at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, and then trained and qualified as a cosmonaut to fly as a flight engineer on future Soyuz missions. He was selected as a Canadian astronaut in 1992 and began training at NASA's Johnson Space Center the same year.