James McNeal Kelly

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James Kelly
James Kelly
Country: United States
Organization: NASA
selected on May 1, 1996
(16th NASA Group)
Calls: 2 space flights
Start of the
first space flight: 		March 8, 2001
Landing of the
last space flight: 		August 9, 2005
Time in space: 26d 15h 52min
retired on December 2010
Space flights

James McNeal "Jim" Kelly (born May 14, 1964 in Burlington , Iowa , United States ) is a retired American astronaut .

Kelly grew up in the small town of Burlington, 260 kilometers northwest of the metropolis of St. Louis . In 1982 he graduated from Burlington Community High School and joined the US Air Force (USAF) . As the first resident of his place, he was given the opportunity to attend the USAF Academy in Colorado . He studied aerospace engineering with engineering as a minor and received a bachelor's degree in May 1986 .

Kelly then received training as an Air Force pilot, which was followed by an advanced course on the F-15 "Eagle" fighter jet at Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix ( Arizona ). He was then transferred to the US air force base on the Japanese island of Okinawa , where he worked, among other things, as a flight instructor and squadron leader.

In April 1992 he returned to the USA, first as an instructor at the Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod ( Massachusetts ), later to the USAF test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base in California , which he graduated in June 1994. He then worked as a test pilot at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada .

Prior to training as an astronaut, Kelly received a Masters Degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Alabama in the summer of 1996 .

NASA activity

It was Kelly's childhood dream to want to be an astronaut. As a five-year-old, he watched the first steps of Neil Armstrong on the moon and decided to take up this profession as well. He focused his career on this with determination: he enrolled at the Air Force Academy because it offered an astronautical subject that exactly met the requirements for a successful application to the US space agency. In addition, aviation has always been one of his passions, which is why he was selected as a shuttle pilot. Vegas, as he is called by his comrades, was selected with NASA's 16th astronaut group in April 1996 and trained at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Texas from the fall of that year .

After four years at NASA, Kelly was nominated for his first space flight. The Discovery flew to the International Space Station (ISS) in March 2001 under the designation STS-102 and carried out the first change of guard: Expedition 2 replaced Expedition 1 , which had been working on board the ISS since October of the previous year.

STS-114 was the first shuttle flight after the Columbia disaster and was operated in late July / early August 2005. As on his maiden flight, Kelly was the space shuttle pilot when the Discovery brought tons of equipment to the ISS and was tasked with making sure that any changes made to the spacecraft system worked as expected.

In September 2007 he resigned as a colonel from the US Air Force and in December 2010 from the astronaut service.

Kelly is married and has four children.

See also

Web links

Commons : James M. Kelly  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME Kelly, James McNeal
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kelly, Jim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astronaut, Lieutenant Colonel of the United States Air Force
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH Burlington , Iowa, USA