Leroy Chiao: An astronaut comes back to Earth

Leroy Chiao gives "thumbs up" on the way to the launch pad in Kazakhstan for the Expedition 10 flight to the international space station. Chiao spent over six months in space during this mission.
Photo: NASA

It was a combination of drive and luck that allowed Leroy Chiao to become an astronaut. After he graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1983 with a B.S. in chemical engineering, Chiao headed to U.C. Santa Barbara for his graduate studies. There he discovered that the airport is practically next door to the campus. "Being so close to an airport allowed me to fulfill one of my dreams," says Chiao. "I took flying lessons and became a pilot."

Chiao"s flying and technical skills opened d doors quickly. He graduated from Santa Barbara in 1987 with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and took a job at Hexcel Corporation in Dublin, CA, near his hometown of Danville. At Hexcel he worked on a joint project with NASA to develop polymer composite reflectors for space telescopes. In 1989 he joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where his father had worked for many years, and he continued his work on aerospace composites.

In January 1990, at age 29 and less than three years after earning his Ph.D., another of Chiao's dreams came true - NASA selected him to be an astronaut. During his 15-year career with NASA, Chiao flew on four missions, including his final mission, Expedition 10, a six-and-a-half month stay aboard the international space station in 2004-2005, on which he was the first Asian-American and ethnic Chinese mission commander in the history of U.S. space flight (see below).

Chiao's last and longest trip in space did not start well. When he boarded the space station in October 2004, he and flight engineer Salizhan Sharipov discovered food stocks were running low. The previous crew had eaten more than planned, but they had failed to notify the ground crew. Chiao and Sharipov went on a mandatory diet and each lost five to ten pounds before the supply ship arrived.

The Nile River's Lake Nasser, formed behind the Aswan High Dam, glistens as the space station flies over Egypt. "I was able to shoot this photo just as the sun was reflecting off of the water, making it appear to be liquid metal," Chiao said.

Chiao and Sharipov, a native of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, took pride in being the first station crew of all-Asian heritage. Since Chiao's Russian was more serviceable than Sharipov's English, they communicated mostly in Russian during their mission.

The Expedition 10 crew maintained the station and worked with science teams on the ground to operate experiments and collect data. Many of the experiments focused on future, more lengthy space flights. Several looked at human physiology (their own) in long-duration space travel. When he was not busy with other tasks, Chiao kept in touch with students from across the United States via video conferencing, and he even called the Cal football team to wish them luck in the 2005 Holiday bowl.

"One of the highlights of my time in orbit was to look out the window at the Earth and snap photos," Chiao says. As part of his duties, Chiao captured photos and video of the Earth based on suggestions made by a team of scientists before the mission began.

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Chiao found that what began as a routine task developed into a passionate hobby, as he gained more interest and skill in photography. "You know, after a while you just get a little better and a little better, and after six and a half months, you get to take a few good ones," he says.

"I try to be artistic, but I am, in many ways, a typical engineer. Photography in space helped to bring out the artistic side in me," Chiao says. "The beauty of the Earth was very inspiring, and I tried to find new ways to capture and express that beauty," he adds.

Astronaut Leroy Chiao shot this photo of the Berkeley campus from the international space station, 230 miles above the Earth's surface.

Chiao retired from NASA in December 2005, after 15 years with the agency. "Expedition 10 and my being the commander of the space station was the culmination of my career," Chiao says. "It was my chance to bring together all the experiences and skills I learned in my 15 years with NASA. I had done everything I wanted to do as an astronaut, and it was time to let some of the younger people at NASA move up, and time for me to try something new."

In February 2006, Chiao began consulting for the Atlanta engineering firm of SpaceWorks Engineering, Inc., and he works with them on a variety of projects. This fall he will join the mechanical engineering faculty at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA, where he will hold the new Smiley and Bernice Raborn Chair.

Chiao will commute to LSU from his Houston suburban home, where he lives with his wife, Karen. The couple, married in 2003, live in a neighborhood built around the local airport. Chiao's commute vehicle is his Grumman Tiger single-engine airplane, which he parks in its hanger adjacent to the runway.

Chiao's family has strong connections to UC Berkeley and the Bay Area. His father was an employee at LLNL, and both sisters are Berkeley graduates. His mother, Cherry, returned to school mid-career and earned a Ph.D. in Berkeley's Department of Materials Science and Engineering in 1976. "Both my parents and sisters still live in the Bay Area," says Chiao, "so returning to live and teach there is a possibility in the future."

About his experience at UC, Chiao says, "There is no one area of chemical engineering that specifically helped me in my career as an astronaut; it was more the general training in engineering. It was a very rigorous education and it taught me about a broad spectrum of technical subjects."

As a Chinese-American, Chiao has been nourished by two cultures. In an interview with a reporter from the China Daily newspaper, Chiao revealed that his radio call name in space is "Shandong," from the name of the province in China where he still has family members. "My parents always tried to teach us the best of both cultures," he told the reporter, attributing his achievement to "the Chinese ethic of hard work and education and the American ethic of innovation and aspiration."

One of Chiao's favorite memories is launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on his final mission to the space station. "The Russians are very proud of their accomplishments in space, and I enjoyed being part of a Russian launch. Unlike NASA launches, at Baikonur you walk on the ground in the open air to the rocket, while spectators on the sidelines cheer and call your name."

When Chiao reflects back on his NASA career he says, "In some ways it was good luck that the airport was so close to the Santa Barbara campus and I could learn to fly. But I had dreamed of being an astronaut ever since being a kid in Danville, so I think I would have figured out how to get into space one way or another."

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