Chris Hadfield and the International Space Station
Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA Back then NASA only accepted U S citizens for astronaut training Chris Hadfield is a Canadian Not wanting to give up so soon Hadfield did the next best thing He joined the Air Force division of the Canadian Armed Forces At training school he was named top pilot in 1980 and top graduate in 1983 In 1988 he went on to become a test pilot in the United States flying new types of aircraft and engines This was very dangerous work but he showed he had exceptional skills in the air ASTRONAUT AT LAST Hadfield’s big break came in 1992 The Canadian Space Agency announced it was hiring astronauts who would train with NASA He applied right away but there were 5,329 other applicants After many weeks of interviews he was told he was one of only four candidates to be selected
Yuri Gagarin was the first person in space The space pioneers First satellite sending signals from space Sputnik Russia October 1957
First human in space Yuri Gagarin Russia April 1961 First American in space Alan Shepard May 1961 First woman in space Valentina Tereshkova Russia June 1963 First human on the Moon Neil Armstrong United States July 1969 IN THE CLASSROOM No one walks into NASA and expects to go straight into space First there are many years of hard training in order to learn how to operate the most complicated machines ever built Then there is the simple fact that many astronauts never go into space at all Opportunities are very limited
Chris Hadfield back row third from right was one of the first two Canadian pilots to join astronaut training at NASA Chris Hadfield began his training at the NASA Space Center in Houston Texas in August 1992 He found that it was a lot like going to school The trainees spent long hours studying in class with an instructor with tests and grades at the end They learned about the many different systems used in spacecraft to keep humans alive in space These include sophisticated flight controls as well as air conditioning and other equipment The trainees did some exercises on computers and others in life-size models of the craft itself
