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Chris Hadfield (born August 29 1959) was among the
first four Canadians selected to become astronauts
by the Canadian Space Agency and became the first
Canadian to walk in space.

Chris was born in Sarnia, Ontario and attended
high school in Milton, Ontario, near Toronto. He
earned an engineering degree from the Royal
Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario.
He trained as a pilot in the Canadian Armed Forces
and was top graduate in his Jet Training class in
1983. After flying CF-18 fighter jets for North
American Aerospace Defense Command|NORAD for three
years, he attended the USAF Test Pilot School at
Edwards Air Force Base in California. His work
then turned to research and testing as an exchange
officer at Strike Test Directorate with the US
Navy. In 1993, Chris successfully competed with
more than 5300 applicants to join the space
program, and was assigned to NASA's Johnson Space
Center.  For 25 shuttle missions, Chris was "the
voice of mission control," the Chief CAPCOM for
NASA.

For his first shuttle mission (STS-74) in 1995,
Chris was Mission Specialist #1 on the Space
Shuttle Atlantis|Atlantis, operating the Canadarm
for NASA's second space shuttle mission to
rendezvous with the Russian Space Station Mir. On
his next mission (STS-100), as Mission Specialist
on the Space Shuttle Endeavour|Endeavour in 2001,
Chris spent 14 hours, 54 minutes outside the craft
on two spacewalks, including the first by a
Canadian. On this mission, the crew used the
Canadarm2 robotic arm to support assembly of the
new International Space Station.

From 2001 to 2003 Hadfield was NASA's Director of
Operations at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training
Center in Star City, Moscow|Star City, Russia.

Hadfield retired from the Canadian Forces as a
Colonel in 2003 after 25 years of service.  He is
now a civilian CSA astronaut and is Chief of
Robotics for the NASA Astronaut Office at the
Johnson Space Center in Houston.

See also: Canadian space program.

==External link==
*http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/hadfield.ht
ml NASA astronaut biography