Leroy Chiao

Chiao's parents were both chemical engineers who immigrated to Milwaukee from the Republic of China in the late 1950s for graduate school.

Stressing a high doctorate level science education, his parents encouraged him to follow their lead and become an engineer.

Chiao's Aviator call sign is "Shandong," the name of the Chinese province where his parents grew up.

Leroy Chiao (born August 28, 1960) is an American chemical engineer, retired NASA astronaut, entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and engineering consultant.

His parents were originally from mainland China and met while studying at a university in Taiwan before immigrating to the U.S. Chiao graduated from Monte Vista High School in Danville in 1978.

In 1983, he earned a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

He later earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1985 and 1987, respectively.

Upon graduation, Chiao joined the Hexcel Corporation in Dublin, California from 1987 to 1989.

He was involved in process, manufacturing, and engineering research on advanced aerospace materials, and worked on a joint NASA-JPL/Hexcel project to develop a practical, optically correct, precision segment reflector made entirely of advanced polymer composite materials for future space telescopes, as well as working on cure modeling and finite element analysis.

In January 1989, Chiao joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, where he was involved in processing research for fabrication of filament-wound and thick-section aerospace composites.

Chiao also developed and demonstrated a mechanistic cure model for graphite fiber and epoxy composite material (see Graphite-reinforced plastic).

An instrument-rated pilot, Chiao has logged over 2500 flight hours in a variety of aircraft.

At age 29, Chiao was selected by NASA in January 1990 (the youngest in Group 13) and became an astronaut in July 1991.

He qualified for flight assignment as a mission specialist.

His technical assignments included: Space Shuttle flight software verification in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL); crew equipment, Spacelab, Spacehab, and payload issues for the Astronaut Office Mission Development Branch; training and flight data file issues; and extravehicular activity (EVA) issues for the EVA Branch.

Chiao also served as Chief of the Astronaut Office EVA Branch.

A veteran of four space flights, Chiao flew as a mission specialist on STS-65 in 1994, STS-72 in 1996 and STS-92 in 2000.

Chiao had logged over 36 days and 12.5 hours in space, including over 26 EVA hours in four space walks, prior to his mission aboard the International Space Station.

Chiao is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.

Additionally, Chiao also learned Russian to communicate with Russian cosmonauts as part of the International Space Station program.

STS-65 Columbia (July 8–23, 1994) launched from and returned to land at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, setting a new flight duration record for the Space Shuttle program at that time.

The STS-65 mission flew the second International Microgravity Laboratory (IML-2).

During the 15-day flight the seven-member crew conducted more than 80 experiments focusing on materials and life sciences research in microgravity.

The STS-65 mission was accomplished in 236 orbits of the Earth, traveling 6.1 million miles in 353 hours and 55 minutes.

STS-72 Endeavour (January 11–20, 1996) was a nine-day mission during which the crew retrieved the Space Flyer Unit (launched from Japan ten months earlier), and deployed and retrieved the OAST-Flyer.

Chiao performed two spacewalks designed to demonstrate tools and hardware, and evaluate techniques to be used in the assembly of the International Space Station.

In completing this mission, Chiao logged a total of 214 hours and 41 seconds in space, including just over thirteen EVA hours, and traveled 3.7 million miles in 142 orbits of the Earth.

STS-92 Discovery (October 11–24, 2000) was launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida and returned to land at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Chiao flew on three Space Shuttle flights, and was the commander of Expedition 10, where he lived on board the International Space Station from October 13, 2004 to April 24, 2005.

He is also a co-author and researcher for the Advanced Diagnostic Ultrasound in Microgravity project.

Chiao was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and raised in Danville, California.

On November 2, 2004, Chiao voted in the 2004 United States presidential election from aboard the International Space Station, making him the first American to vote in a presidential election while in space.

McDonald's presented Chiao with a Big Mac and French Fries at their branch in Star City as one of his first meals since returning to Earth after his ISS assignment.

Among the souvenirs he brought into space in his previous space flights were a Chinese flag and a quartz-carved rose from Hong Kong.

Chiao was the inadvertent developer of the procedure to use the IRED (Interim Resistive Exercise Device) to excite the solar arrays of the ISS.

During an exercise session of squats on the ISS, Chiao sent a vibration through the space station that caused the solar arrays to ripple – a low amplitude frequency response.

When Chiao did this, the response from Mission Control was "knock it off."

Chiao left NASA in December 2005 to pursue employment in the private sector.

However, several years later during an ISS assembly flight in December 2006 (STS-116), German astronaut Thomas Reiter of the European Space Agency was told to do 30 seconds of robust exercise on the bungee-bar IRED machine to help retract ISS solar arrays, specifically to relieve tension in a wire system that was preventing the array from folding up like an accordion.

An eventual unplanned spacewalk during the same shuttle mission managed to finally retract the array.