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International space station david bowie6/11/2023 ![]() ![]() He flew again in April 2001 on STS-100, when he visited the ISS and walked in space to help install Canadarm2. He first flew in space in November 1995 as a mission specialist aboard STS-74, visiting the Russian space station Mir. In 1992, Hadfield was accepted into the Canadian astronaut program by the Canadian Space Agency. As part of an exchange program with the United States Navy and United States Air Force, he obtained a master's degree in aviation systems at the University of Tennessee Space Institute. Hadfield learned to fly various types of aircraft in the military and eventually became a test pilot, flying several experimental planes. ![]() After enlisting in the Canadian Armed Forces, he earned an engineering degree at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario. He attended high school in Oakville and Milton in southern Ontario, and earned his glider pilot licence as a member of the Royal Canadian Air Cadets. Hadfield has cited part of his career inspiration to have come to him as a child, when he watched the first crewed Moon landing by American spaceflight Apollo 11 on television. Prior to his career as an astronaut, he served in the Canadian Armed Forces for 25 years as an Air Command fighter pilot. The first Canadian to perform extravehicular activity in outer space, he has flown two Space Shuttle missions and also served as commander of the International Space Station (ISS). That seems short-sighted.Chris Austin Hadfield OC OOnt MSC CD (born August 29, 1959) is a Canadian retired astronaut, engineer, fighter pilot, musician, and writer. And that can't be good for Australia to tell your young people that, 'Oh, you're interested in space travel? Then go somewhere else'. If you're a young Australian, and you're interested in exploring the rest of the universe, you have to leave. Where are the areas of expertise like Canada has pursued? Robotics, and remote sensing, and telecommunications … really benefit our country, and it's a multi-billion-dollar industry in Canada. I think Canada is maybe not a bad example of the type of space agency that Australia could form. And Australia, with the Woomera test range, with three Australians that have left this country in order to become astronauts, I think they have a long history of recognising that potential is out there.Īnd it's only slightly smaller than Canada in size and population. To deny that the rest of the universe exists, or that space isn't a viable subset of the businesses of the world, I think is a little bit self-defeating. Should Australia create its own space agency? Loading. And from that we whittled it down to two. In Canada, about 8,000 people started the process, about 3,700 completed it - had a good application. ![]() You have to have the right citizenship, of course, for any particular country's agency.Īnd hopefully you have some work experience that is indicative of your ability to succeed as an astronaut. You have to have an advanced university degree. You have to be a certain size, because you have to fit both in a space ship and a space suit, so you can't be enormously tall or short or fat or thin. Loading YouTube content What it takes to be an astronaut Loading. To me that might be the best part: that he got delight out of my particular version of the song. He had always fantasised about flying in space - Starman, and Mars, and all that other stuff, and I think for him it was just like a gift, to have that song updated with the lyrics, performed actually in space, just a couple of years before he was taken. He wrote that song at the beginning, when he was still 19 or 20, before we had even walked on the moon. I think, for him, he knew he was ill - it was getting to the end of his life. He described it as the most poignant version of the song ever done, which just floored me. David Bowie 'loved' the recording Loading. He spoke to Lateline about the late pop star's reaction to his recording, what it takes to become an astronaut, and whether Australia needs to carve its own path in the space industry. It started as a little "family project", he told Lateline - something fun to do with his son, back on Earth, while he was aboard the International Space Station.įour years later, the music video they created and released has been viewed more than 35 million times, and Hadfield, now retired, has become one of the best-loved figures in seven decades of space exploration. In 2013, while rotating around the Earth, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded a cover of David Bowie's early career hit, Space Oddity. ![]()
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