October 06, 2008

Contact: Amy Hewes
College of Engineering
805-756-6402
ahewes@calpoly.edu

Biographical Data: NASA Astronaut Gregory Chamitoff

EDUCATION:.
B.S., Electrical Engineering, California Polytechnic State University, 1984.
M.S., Aeronautical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, 1985.
Ph.D., Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992.
M.S., Planetary Geology (Space Science), University of Houston Clear Lake, 2002. 

SPECIAL HONORS: AIAA Associate Fellow; AIAA Technical Excellence Award; NASA Silver Snoopy Award; NASA/USA Space Flight Awareness Award; C.S. Draper Laboratory Graduate Fellowship; IEEE Graduate Fellowship; Tau Beta Pi Honor Society Fellowship; Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society; Eta Kappa Nu Honor Society; Applied Magnetics Scholarships; Academic Excellence Award; Most Outstanding Senior Award; Degree of Excellence and California Statewide Speech Finalist; Eagle Scout.

EXPERIENCE: As an undergraduate student at Cal Poly, Chamitoff taught lab courses in circuit design and worked summer internships at Four Phase Systems, Atari Computers, Northern Telecom, and IBM. He developed a self-guided robot for his undergraduate thesis project. While at MIT and Draper Labs (1985-1992), Chamitoff worked on several NASA projects. He performed stability analysis for the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope, designed flight control upgrades for the Space Shuttle autopilot, and worked on the attitude control system for the Space Station. His doctoral thesis developed a new approach for robust intelligent flight control of hypersonic vehicles. From 1993 to 1995, Dr. Chamitoff was a visiting professor at the University of Sydney, Australia, where he led a research group in the development of autonomous flight vehicles, and taught courses in flight dynamics and control. He has published numerous papers on aircraft and spacecraft guidance and control, trajectory optimization, and Mars mission design.

 NASA EXPERIENCE: In 1995, Chamitoff joined the Motion Control Systems Group in the Mission Operations Directorate at the Johnson Space Center, where he developed software applications for spacecraft attitude control monitoring, prediction, analysis, and maneuver optimization.

Selected by NASA for the Astronaut Class of 1998, Dr. Chamitoff started training in August 1998 and qualified for flight assignment as a Mission Specialist in 2000. Since then, he has worked in the Space Station Robotics branch, been the lead CAPCOM for ISS Expedition 9, acted as Crew Support Astronaut for ISS Expedition 6, and helped develop onboard procedures and displays for Space Station system operations.

In July 2002, Dr. Chamitoff was a crew-member on the Aquarius undersea research habitat for 9 days as part of the NEEMO 3 mission (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations).

Dr. Chamitoff is currently assigned as ISS Flight Engineer on Expedition 18 and is spending several months living and working onboard the International Space Station.