Michael Foale

Colin Michael Foale, CBE, PhD (born 6 January 1957) is a British-American astrophysicist and former NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of six Space Shuttle missions and extended missions on both Mir and the International Space Station. He was the first Briton to perform a space walk, and until 17 April 2008, he held the record for most time spent in space by a US citizen: 374 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes. He still holds the cumulative-time-in-space record for a UK citizen.

Life and career

Foale was born in Louth, Lincolnshire to a British father, Colin, and an American mother, Mary. He was raised in Cambridge and educated at The King's School, Canterbury. A member of the Air Training Corps, he studied at Queens' College, Cambridge, (with Stephen Fry who mocked his ambition of going to space) receiving a first-class honours degree in natural sciences in 1978 and a doctorate in laboratory astrophysics in 1982. When he left university he "owned two pairs of jeans, a donkey jacket, a bicycle and a pilot’s licence; which shows I had my priorities absolutely right."

Space station

A space station, also known as an orbital station or an orbital space station, is a spacecraft capable of supporting a crew, which is designed to remain in space (most commonly as an artificial satellite in low Earth orbit) for an extended period of time and for other spacecraft to dock. A space station is distinguished from other spacecraft used for human spaceflight by lack of major propulsion or landing systems. Instead, other vehicles transport people and cargo to and from the station. As of September 2014 two space stations are in orbit: the International Space Station, which is permanently manned, and China's Tiangong-1 (which successfully launched on September 29, 2011), which is unmanned most of the time. Previous stations include the Almaz and Salyut series, Skylab and most recently Mir.

Today's space stations are research platforms, used to study the effects of long-term space flight on the human body as well as to provide platforms for greater number and length of scientific studies than available on other space vehicles. Each crew member staying aboard the station for weeks or months, but rarely more than a year. Most of the time crew remain at station but its not necessary that crew should have to be stay at station. Since the ill-fated flight of Soyuz 11 to Salyut 1, all manned spaceflight duration records have been set aboard space stations. The duration record for a single spaceflight is 437.7 days, set by Valeriy Polyakov aboard Mir from 1994 to 1995. As of 2013, three astronauts have completed single missions of over a year, all aboard Mir.

International Space Station

The International Space Station (ISS) is a space station, or a habitable artificial satellite, in low Earth orbit. Its first component launched into orbit in 1998, and the ISS is now the largest artificial body in orbit and can often be seen with the naked eye from Earth. The ISS consists of pressurised modules, external trusses, solar arrays, and other components. ISS components have been launched by Russian Proton and Soyuz rockets as well as American Space Shuttles.

The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and other fields. The station is suited for the testing of spacecraft systems and equipment required for missions to the Moon and Mars. The ISS maintains an orbit with an altitude of between 330 and 435 km (205 and 270 mi) by means of reboost manoeuvres using the engines of the Zvezda module or visiting spacecraft. It completes 15.54 orbits per day.

Michael

Michael /ˈmaɪkəl/ is a male given name that comes from the Hebrew: מִיכָאֵל / מיכאל‎ (Mīkhāʼēl, pronounced [miχaˈʔel]), derived from the question מי כאל mī kāʼēl, meaning "Who is like God?" (literally, "Who is like El?). In English, it is sometimes shortened to Mike, Mikey, Mickey, or Mick.

Female forms of Michael include Michelle, Michele, Michaela, Mechelle, Micheline, and Michaelle, although Michael is occasionally seen as a female name; women named Michael include actresses Michael Learned and Michael Michele. Another form is Mychal, which can either be a male or female name.

Patronymic surnames that come from Michael include Michaels, Carmichael, MacMichael, McMichael, Micallef, Michaelson, Mikkelsen, DiMichele, Mikhaylov, Mykhaylenko, Mikeladze, Michels, and Mitchell.

Religion

The name first appears in the Hebrew Bible in the Book of Numbers, 13:13 where Sethur the son of Michael is one of 12 spies sent into the Land of Canaan. The archangel Michael features in the Book of Daniel 12:1, and in the Qur'an as Mikhail.

Mir

Mir (Russian: Мир, IPA: [ˈmʲir]; lit. Peace [homonym: world]) was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, owned by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. Mir was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996. It had a greater mass than any previous spacecraft. Until 21 March 2001 it was the largest artificial satellite in orbit, succeeded by the International Space Station after Mir's orbit decayed. The station served as a microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology and spacecraft systems with a goal of developing technologies required for permanent occupation of space.

Mir was the first continuously inhabited long-term research station in orbit and held the record for the longest continuous human presence in space at 3,644 days until 23 October 2010 when it was surpassed by the ISS. It holds the record for the longest single human spaceflight, with Valeri Polyakov spending 437 days and 18 hours on the station between 1994 and 1995. Mir was occupied for a total of twelve and a half years out of its fifteen-year lifespan, having the capacity to support a resident crew of three, or larger crews for short visits.