Leroy Chiao
Leroy Chiao
Leroy Chiaois an American engineer, former NASA astronaut, entrepreneur, motivational speaker and engineering consultant. Chiao flew on three 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAstronaut
Date of Birth28 August 1960
CityMilwaukee, WI
CountryUnited States of America
As commander I was responsible for the overall success of the mission, and so I had to know at least a little bit about everything.
I'm Chinese-American, of course, and so it's very interesting to see China actually launch their own astronauts, becoming the third nation, following the United States and Russia, to do so.
Space is very unforgiving business
I hope that China will continue with space exploration. It would be logical to have international co-operation. I hope that it will come about and that I can be involved in it.
There were different challenges along the way. Certainly the food shortage was unpleasant.
Our task was doing maintenance and repairs to keep the station in a good state for the return of the shuttle flights and resumption of major ISS construction.
The most interesting thing was looking out the window and taking photographs of different places on Earth.
Well, it's still a bit uncertain, but I will do the consulting, and I'll see how I can contribute. But I'm sure whatever I do will involve the space program. That's where my passion is.
But a lot of that kind of work is done pre-flight, coordinating efforts with the flight directors and the ground teams, and figuring out how you're going to operate together.
I spent a lot of my time working in the American module, and he would stay in the Russian segment working on his things, and we'd meet up at meal times. So it actually worked out very well.