- \n
- Historical Forum<\/li>\n
- L2 Historical Section<\/li>\n
- Click here to Join L2<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Working as a payload officer on four Shuttle missions (STS-51G, 51-I, 61-B and 61-C), Foale saw his application to become an astronaut twice turned down, despite by-passing the US citizen requirement via his dual-nationality.<\/p>\n
However, he was finally selected into the Astronaut Corp in 1987, a year after the loss of Shuttle Challenger during STS-51L.<\/p>\n
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n
Foale\u2019s first flight into space was as Mission Specialist -3 (MS-3) with Atlantis on her STS-45 mission, launched on March 24, 1992. It was Atlantis\u2019 11th mission, the 46th overall Space Shuttle mission.<\/p>\n
During STS-45, Atlantis carried the first Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (ATLAS-1) on Spacelab pallets mounted in her Payload Bay. The non-deployable payload was equipment with experiments from the U.S., France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Japan.<\/p>\n
T
![\"STS-45](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Z35.jpg\" "\\"STS-45")
he purpose of ATLAS-1 was to conduct studies in atmospheric chemistry, solar radiation, space plasma physics, and ultraviolet astronomy. Six additional middeck experiments, the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet experiment, and one get-away special experiment were also flown on Atlantis on STS-45.<\/p>\nAfter nearly nine days in space, Atlantis landed safely at the Kennedy Space Center on Runway 33 on April 2, 1992.<\/p>\n
STS-45 was commanded by the current NASA administrator Charlie Bolden, who paid tribute to the departing Foale.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe salute Mike and his contributions to NASA as an accomplished member of the astronaut corps,\u201d noted General Bolden. \u201cStarting with his first flight, shuttle mission STS-45, when we flew together in 1992, Mike has worked tirelessly to support NASA\u2019s quest to explore the unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"STS-56](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Z42.jpg\" "\\"STS-56")
Following his debut space mission, Foale would only have to wait another year before his next ride, this time as Mission Specialist -1 (MS-1) on Shuttle Discovery during STS-56.<\/p>\nLaunch in April 1993, Foale and the crew conducted numerous experiments with ATLAS-2 (Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science-2) to collect data on the relationship between the Sun\u2019s energy output and Earth\u2019s middle atmosphere and how these factors affect the ozone layer.<\/p>\n
The crew also deployed the SPARTAN-201 satellite, a free-flying science instrument platform designed to study velocity and acceleration of the solar wind and observe the sun\u2019s corona.<\/p>\n
SPARTAN-201 free flew for two days before being retrieved by Discovery\u2019s crew.<\/p>\n
Foale then took part in a major international mission, once again involving a ride on Discovery, but this time to the Russian Space Station Mir.<\/p>\n
![\"Mir](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Z54.jpg\" "\\"Mir")
With Foale riding as Mission Specialist -2 (MS-2), Discovery\u2019s 20th mission \u2013 STS-63 \u2013 saw the first Shuttle mission to rendezvous with the Mir space station. The mission \u2013 in February, 1995 \u2013 also marked another historical milestone: the first U.S. manned space mission to be piloted by a female; in this case, Eileen Collins.<\/p>\nWhile the eight day mission did not actually dock to MIR, it was the final test-bed mission before Shuttle-Mir dockings began in the summer of 1995 with Shuttle Atlantis.<\/p>\n
However, Foale had to wait until the sixth mission in the series of hook ups between the Shuttle Atlantis and Mir, as he prepared to take up residency on the Russian Station he had seen from a close distance during his previous mission.<\/p>\n
Liftoff of Atlantis and STS-84 occurred on May 15, 1997 and represented the 19th flight of Atlantis and the 84th Space Shuttle mission.<\/p>\n
![\"Foale](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Z73.jpg\" "\\"Foale")
Docking between Atlantis and Mir occurred on May 16 over the Adriatic sea. Over the course of the five day docked mission, Atlantis\u2019 crew transferred 7,310 lbs of water and supplies to and from Mir \u2013 setting a record for the amount of supplies transferred between two space vehicles.<\/p>\nAfter nearly five days of docked operations, Atlantis departed MIR, leaving Foale aboard the Russian outpost for the period including expeditions Mir 23 and Mir 24.<\/p>\n
His stay was more eventful than he would have expected, after a Russian Progress resupply vehicle (M-34) crashed into the Station during a redocking test \u2013 a test aimed at saving money by removing the Kurs automated docking system from the spacecraft.<\/p>\n
![\"Mir](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Z84.jpg\" "\\"Mir")
With the redocking under the manual control of Vasily Tsibliyev, the Progress spacecraft collided with the Spektr module, damaging both the module itself, and a solar panel.<\/p>\nAs Foale used his expertise in physics to aid Russian ground controllers into correcting the resulting attitude misalignments that resulted from the collision, Tsibliyev and Aleksandr Lazutkin went to work to inspect the collision damage from the interior of the station.<\/p>\n
The damage was closely inspected by Foale during Mir 24, as he and Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyev conducted a six-hour EVA in the Russian Orlan spacesuit to inspect exterior damage to the station\u2019s Spektr module.<\/p>\n
![\"Foale](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Z92.jpg\" "\\"Foale")
Foale was picked up from Mir by Atlantis in September 1997, on what was her 20th flight and her seventh straight mission to MIR. Docking of Atlantis and MIR occurred on September 27.<\/p>\nIn addition to the crew rotation and thousands of pounds of supplies and experiments, Atlantis\u2019 STS-86 mission featured the first joint-US\/Russian spacewalk (EVA) during a Shuttle mission.<\/p>\n
After closing hatches between the two vehicles, Foale and Atlantis bid farewell to Mir for the last time on October 3, 1997 after nearly six days of docked operations.<\/p>\n
Landing occurred on October 6 1997, ending Atlantis\u2019 final mission before she was taken out of service for another Orbiter Modification Down Period. Atlantis would not fly again until May 2000 when she made her first trip to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n
![\"Foale](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Z111.jpg\" "\\"Foale")
Meanwhile, Foale prepared himself for a new challenge, after being selected for Discovery\u2019s STS-103 mission to carry out an emergency repair on the Hubble Space Telescope.<\/p>\nOriginally, NASA had planned to fly the HST Servicing Mission (SM-3) in June 2000, but the failure of a third of six stabilization gyroscopes on the telescope mandated the consideration of a \u201ccall-up\u201d mission to preserve the telescope.<\/p>\n
Thus, NASA split the HST SM 3 mission in half and moved up the now-manifested HST SM 3A mission on STS-103 into 1999.<\/p>\n
Liftoff of Discovery on the truncated STS-103 mission \u2013 due to the flight\u2019s proximity to the end of the calendar year, via an issue known as YERO \u2013 finally occurred on December 19, 1999.<\/p>\n
![\"Foale](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Z12.jpg\" "\\"Foale")
Three spacewalks were performed on the mission \u2013 down from the originally scheduled four \u2013 which successfully restored Hubble to operating condition. Foale himself ventured out of Discovery\u2019s airlock during an eight hour EVA.<\/p>\nDespite the excitement of his sixth shuttle flight, Foale still had one more spacecraft to visit \u2013 the newly born ISS.<\/p>\n
Adding the Soyuz to his list of spacecraft he had travelled on, Foale launched as part of a three member international crew on Soyuz TMA-3 in October, 2003.<\/p>\n
Arriving at the orbital outpost as part of Expedition 8, Foale became the only American citizen to have served on both Mir and the ISS.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Z14.jpg\" "\\"Kaleri")
The veteran astronaut became commander of the Station during his six month stay.<\/p>\nFoale conducted a spacewalk during his expedition, alongside Alexander Kaleri. However, the EVA was cut short due to a problem with Kaleri\u2019s spacesuit.<\/p>\n
Foale and Kaleri departed the station aboard their Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft in April 2004, along with ESA Astronaut Andre Kuipers, who had arrived with the Expedition 9 crew aboard Soyuz TMA-4 just nine days earlier.<\/p>\n
With his space flight days over, Foale \u2013 who was awarded both the Yuri A. Gagarin Gold Medal and later a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) from the Queen, who he escorted during a tour of JSC \u2013 remained with NASA until his retirement on August 9.<\/p>\n
![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Z16.jpg\" "\\"Michael")
Foale \u2013 who joins fellow British born astronauts Nick Patrick and Piers Sellers in retirement from NASA\u2019s astronaut corp \u2013 will now enter the commercial sector to work on the development of an electric aircraft.<\/p>\n\u201cI know Mike will go on to do more great things,\u201d added his former commander, General Bolden, \u201cas he continues to support the aerospace industry in his new endeavor.\u201d<\/p>\n
ESA\u2019s Tim Peake is now the last remaining active British astronaut, as he prepares for his trip to the ISS in 2015. However, unlike Foale, Patrick and Sellers, Major Peake will have a Union Jack on his arm, following the British government\u2019s decision to finally provide support for British astronauts.<\/p>\n
(Images via NASA and L2 Historical \u2013 which contains huge collections of hi res images \u2013 many unreleased \u2013 from nearly every shuttle mission)<\/p>\n
(Click here: http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/l2\/ \u2013 to view how you can access the best space flight content on the entire internet)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
British-born astronaut Michael Foale has retired from NASA following an amazing career that saw him fly on six Space Shuttle missions, a Soyuz and two Space Stations. Moving to a career in the commercial section, Foale\u2019s space flight legacy includes 374 days in space, a record for an American citizen. Famous Foale: Born in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8289,233,8118,1302,9101,3724,9102,9103,9104],"class_list":["post-39788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-hst","tag-iss","tag-mir","tag-soyuz","tag-sts-103","tag-sts-45","tag-sts-56","tag-sts-63","tag-sts-84"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39788"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}