Michael López-Alegría

Michael López-Alegría is a Spanish-born American astronaut and retired Navy pilot. López-Alegría, who made six spaceflights, is known for the records for the most spacewalks and the longest total spacewalk time among NASA astronauts. He later commanded the first two special missions of the private space company Axiom Space.

He was born in Madrid on May 30, 1958, and spent his childhood and youth in Mission Viejo, California. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1980 with a degree in systems engineering; He earned a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in 1988. He served as a flight instructor and test pilot in the Navy, rising to the rank of colonel.

NASA years

In 1992, he was selected among NASA's astronaut candidates. He flew three missions with the space shuttle: STS-73 in 1995, STS-92 in 2000, and STS-113 in 2002. He traveled to the International Space Station aboard Soyuz TMA-9 on his fourth flight and served as commander of Expedition 14 from September 2006 to April 2007.

In this mission, he performed five spacewalks and stayed in space for 215 days in a single flight. He spent approximately 67 hours and 40 minutes on a total of ten spacewalks during his career; For this period, it ranks second in the world.

Private space flights

After leaving NASA in March 2012, he served as president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, then joined Axiom Space. In April 2022, he became commander of Ax-1, the first fully private crewed mission to the International Space Station. He served as commander again in the Ax-3 mission in January 2024. López-Alegría, who has US and Spanish citizenship, is also known as the first space traveler born in Spain.