Christopher Ferguson

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Chris Ferguson
Chris Ferguson
Country: United States
Organization: NASA
selected on June 4, 1998
( 17th NASA Group )
Calls: 3 space flights
Start of the
first space flight: 		September 9, 2006
Landing of the
last space flight: 		July 21, 2011
Time in space: 40d 10h 03min
retired on December 9, 2011
Space flights

Christopher John "Chris" Ferguson (born September 1, 1961 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , USA ) is an American astronaut .

Life

Ferguson grew up in the largest city in the US state Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia he spent his childhood, attended elementary and secondary schools and finally the university. Upon leaving Archbishop Ryan High School in 1979, he enlisted in the US Navy . He took part in a five-year naval cooperation course between the university and the military in part: he studied in Philadelphia at Drexel University engineering while at the Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station Patuxent River ( Maryland graduated) officer training. In the summer of 1984 he passed his bachelor's degree and began his pilot training.

After a nine-month advanced course on the Grumman F-14 , he was assigned to the 11th Combat Squadron, which is stationed at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia . On board the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal , which has since been decommissioned , the “Red Rippers”, as the squadron was nicknamed, set out for five months in early June 1986 for the Mediterranean. Ferguson's next assignment was participation in the NATO exercise "Ocean Safari '87" in the fjords of Norway , to which the USS Forrestal set sail at the end of August 1987 and returned after only five weeks. Between the end of April and the beginning of October 1988, the aircraft carrier had operational orders for the Central and Arabian Seas and the North Atlantic .

The United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program back in the United States visited Ferguson in Miramar ( California trained) and became the Tactical Officer. This course has been known as TOPGUN since the film of the same name with Tom Cruise, although its official name is Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor (sometimes the school that has since moved to Nevada is incorrectly referred to as TOPGUN). In 1989 Ferguson continued his studies in Monterey, California. He attended Class 101 at the Naval Postgraduate School and received a Masters in Aerospace Engineering in 1991 .

From July 1992 Ferguson worked in the equipment department of the Strike Aircraft Test Directorate at the Patuxent River naval base. For two years he was a project officer responsible for weapon development for the F-14. He then was an instructor at the Naval Test Pilot School, which is also housed on the premises. From the summer of 1995, another war mission followed: Ferguson was a member of Kampfgeschwader 211 (USN designation VF-211), which supported " Operation Southern Watch " as part of Carrier Air Wing 9 on board the USS Nimitz . At the end of November 1995, the aircraft carrier and its escort ships left the home port of San Diego (California) for the western Pacific , Indian Ocean and finally the Persian Gulf . After its primary task of monitoring the Iraqi no-fly zone, the USS Nimitz made a stopover off the coast of Taiwan ( Strait of Taiwan ) on its return voyage in March 1996 when the People's Republic of China was conducting weapons tests in the area. At the end of May this mission of the USS Nimitz came to an end. Ferguson then left the "Fighting Checkmates", as the VF-211 calls itself, and took up a desk position as an F-14 Class Desk Officer for the Atlantic fleet with Commander Naval Air Force at Naval Air Station Norfolk, Virginia.

Astronaut activity

Ferguson was introduced as one of eight candidate pilots with NASA's 17th astronaut group in June 1998, after having unsuccessfully applied two years earlier. 101 finalists emerged from a total of 2,618 applicants who met the formal selection criteria. In the fall of 1997, they were invited to the Johnson Space Center in Houston , Texas, for tests, discussions and medical examinations.

Chris Ferguson completed the two-year basic training in the fall of 2000. He then worked for a year and a half in the space systems department of the astronauts office.

From February 2002 he was preparing for his first space flight. He was a pilot of the STS-115 mission , a flight to the International Space Station (ISS) originally planned for 2003. Caused by the Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003, all flights were initially suspended. STS-115 could finally be carried out in September 2006. After docking with the ISS, the crew of the Atlantis assembled the 16-tonne P3 / P4 element in six days . The space station thus received the second of four solar modules.

Chris Ferguson was in command of the STS-126 mission . On November 15, 2008, he took off for the ISS on the Endeavor space shuttle .

On September 14, 2010, Ferguson was nominated as commander of the STS-135 shuttle mission . The launch took place on July 8, the landing on July 21, 2011. Ferguson was the last commander of a space shuttle mission.

Ferguson has been with Boeing since leaving NASA in late 2011 as Director of Crew and Mission Operations in Boeing's Commercial Crew Program . He has been nominated by Boeing as a crew member for the Boe-CFT mission , the first manned flight of the CST-100 spacecraft .

Private

Ferguson and his wife Sandra have three children. He was a drummer in the astronauts' rock band Max Q .

See also

Web links

Commons : Christopher Ferguson  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ NASA Assigns Crew for Final Launch on Need Shuttle Mission. NASA, September 14, 2010, accessed May 6, 2011 .
  2. ↑ Jeff Foust: NASA assigns astronauts to first commercial crew missions. Space News, August 3, 2018, accessed January 7, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Ferguson, Christopher
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ferguson, Christopher John; Ferguson, Chris
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astronaut
DATE OF BIRTH September 1, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia , Pennsylvania