NASA
astronaut Gregory Chamitoff is settling into life aboard the International
Space Station (ISS) and gearing up for the long orbital haul.
Chamitoff,
45, is newest member of the station’s three-man Expedition 17 crew, where
he’ll serve the dual role of flight engineer and NASA’s science
officer for the next six months of his long-duration spaceflight.
“It’s
amazing to be up here, but what makes it meaningful are our family and friends
back there,” Chamitoff said of Earth this week in a televised interview.
A native of
Montreal, Canada, Chamitoff is a planetary geologist and engineer by training
and grew up in San Jose, Calif. He is married and father to three-year-old
fraternal twins, and is making his first career spaceflight on Expedition 17.
“I
wanted to do this my whole life, it seems,” Chamitoff said before flight
in a NASA interview, adding that he caught the spaceflight bug ate age 6 when
his family watched firsthand as the astronaut crew of Apollo 11 launched the
first lunar landing mission in July 1969. “My dad was always very excited
about the space program. I told him then that’s what I want to do, and
kind of never gave up on that.”
Chamitoff launched
toward the station aboard NASA’s space shuttle Discovery on May 31
and watched from orbit last week as his former crewmates landed
safely at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.,
on June 14. He replaced fellow NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman and helped to
install the space station’s new Japanese Kibo laboratory, a massive
laboratory the size of a large tour bus that Chamitoff will continue to work on
during his mission.
“It’s
just a spectacular new module,” he said this week. “It’s a
pretty amazing addition to the space station.”
The new
Kibo lab is 37 feet (11 meters) long, about 14.4 feet (4.4 meters) wide and
sports two windows, a small airlock and a primary 33-foot (10-meter) robotic
arm designed to move experiments out to an porch-like external platform that is
slated to launch next year. A smaller robotic arm for fine movements I also
expected to be delivered in 2009.
Chamitoff
will work alongside the station’s Russian cosmonaut commander, Sergei
Volkov, and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko during his flight to complete
robotic arm tests and outfit the new lab, as well as its roof-mounted storage
room, for space operations. He is slated to return to Earth aboard NASA’s
shuttle Endeavour in November.
But despite
his busy work schedule, Chamitoff is making sure to take some time to gaze down
on his home planet from orbit. Earlier this week, he caught a glimpse of his
home state of California just before bedtime.
“I
could see all the way to the Baja Peninsula,” Chamitoff said. “It
was amazing to realize that so many of my favorite places, so many of my
favorite people and family and friends, were all in this one area and we flew
by it in such a short period of time.”
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