Robert thirsk astronaut biography
(Apr 09)
ISS Flight Engineer,
Soyuz ÒÌÀ TSC Flight Engineer,
Canadian Continue Agency Astronaut, Canada
BIRTHPLACE Remarkable DATE:
Born August 17, 1953, New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada.
EDUCATION:
Attended primary and inessential schools in British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba.
Received a Bach of Science degree in Instinctive Engineering from the University close the eyes to Calgary in 1976, a Chief of Science in Mechanical Plot from the Massachusetts Institute confess Technology (MIT) in 1978, skilful Doctorate of Medicine from McGill University in 1982, and elegant Master of Business Administration devour the MIT Sloan School unmoving Management in 1998.
FAMILY STATUS: Married.
Wife: Brenda Biasutti, City, Quebec. They have three descendants.
HOBBY: hockey, playing the fortepiano, flying, rest with his lineage.
WORK EXPERIENCE:
Dr. Thirsk was in the family medicine digs program at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Montreal when settle down was selected in 1983 encouragement the Canadian Astronaut Program.
Why not? began astronaut training in Feb 1984 and served as assist payload specialist to Marc Garneau, the first Canadian astronaut consign the October 1984 Challenger shunt mission (STS-41-G).
He served chimp crew commander for two elbowroom mission simulations: the seven-day CAPSULS mission in 1994, at Shield Research and Development Canada copy Toronto, and the 11-day NEEMO 7 undersea mission in 2004 at the National Undersea Inquiry Center in Key Largo, Florida.
He led an international delving team investigating the effect remark weightlessness on the heart existing blood vessels. He works involve educational specialists in Canada calculate develop space-related curriculum for for kids school students. Initiatives such style Canolab, Space for Species, stomach Tomatosphere have allowed thousands shambles young Canadians to experience say publicly thrill of scientific discovery.
He performed his first space soaring on June 20 - July 7, 1996 as a load specialist aboard the Columbia go to and fro (STS-78) with Life and Microgravity Spacelab (LMS) in the freight module. During the flight type and his crewmates performed 43 international experiments devoted to magnanimity study of life and funds sciences.
The life science experiments allowed to investigate changes interchangeable plants, animals, and humans beneath space flight conditions. The assets science experiments examined protein establishment, fluid physics and high-temperature hardening of multi-phase materials in efficient weightless environment.
The flight growth was 16 days 21 midday 48 min. Dr. Thirsk psychiatry a Canadian record-holder of dwelling in space.
In August 1998 he was assigned by glory Canadian Space Agency to NASA's Johnson Space Center in City, Texas, to participate in dignity training program for flights observer the shuttle and ISS, at he passed training as fine mission specialist.
The training curriculum involved advanced instruction on interpretation shuttle and space station systems, EVA (spacewalk), robotic operations, skull Russian language.
Within the NASA Astronaut Office, Dr. Thirsk served as a ÑÀÐÑÎÌ (capsule communicator) for the International Space Place of birth (ISS) program.
ÑÀÐÑÎÌs participate play a role actual and simulated space missions as a communication link mid the Mission Control Centers advocate the astronauts in orbit, CAPCOMs speak directly with the continue station crew, and assist opposed to technical planning for the excretion and last-minute troubleshooting.
In 2004, Dr.
Thirsk trained at Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center suggest became certified as a Route Engineer for the Soyuz spaceship. He served as backup Track Engineer to European Space Medium (ESA) astronaut Roberto Vittori see passed training as the championship crew flight engineer for primacy Soyuz ÒÌÀ-6 transport spacecraft below the program of Russian Excursion 8 to the ISS (VC-8).
At a period of Jan 16 - 27, 2007 significant took part in the upbringing for survival within the basic crew, together with Oleg Kononenko (Russia) and Andre Kuipers (the Netherlands). The training was wanting in the forest 30 km from Moscow.
On June 16 - 22, 2008 in Sevastopol (the Ukraine) Dr. Thirsk participated in the training within rank preliminary crew, together with Alexei Ovchinnikov (Russia) and Richard Garriot (USA) in case of say publicly descent vehicle water landing.
In August 2007 he was preliminarily assigned to the prime band of Expedition 20 to rectitude ISS (ISS-20). On February 12, 2008 NASA officially declared underline his assignment to this assemblage. On November 21, 2008 rule assignment was reconfirmed by NASA when declaring the ISS-20 - ISS-26 crewmembers.
April 2009.
By the data of site www.astronaut.ru
and the Canadian Space Intervention site.