Leadership

Advisor

Dr. Gregory E. Chamitoff

Professor of Engineering Practice, Aerospace Engineering Director, AeroSpace Technology, Research and Operations (ASTRO) 

Originally from Montreal, Canada, Greg Chamitoff served as a NASA Astronaut for 15 years, including Shuttle Missions STS-124,126,134 and Space Station long duration missions Expedition 17 and 18. He has lived and worked in Space for almost 200 days as a Flight Engineer, Science Officer, and Mission Specialist. His last mission was on the final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour, during which he performed two spacewalks, including the last one of the Shuttle era which also completed the assembly of the International Space Station. 

Chamitoff earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Cal Poly, M.S. in Aeronautics from Caltech, and Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT. He also holds a Minor and a Masters in Planetary (Space) Science. Prior to selection by the NASA Astronaut Program in 1998, Chamitoff worked at Four Phase Systems, Atari Computers, Northern Telecom, IBM and Draper Laboratory. As a Draper Fellow he worked on several NASA projects, including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Space Shuttle autopilot, and the attitude control system for Space Station Freedom. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of Sydney, Australia, before joining Mission Operations at the Johnson Space Center, where he worked on attitude control and maneuver optimization for the International Space Station (ISS). He is an author of NASA’s first technology memo on resource utilization on Mars, and worked on various projects related to Mars mission design. As an Astronaut, he has been Lead CAPCOM in Mission Control, and supported ongoing missions in numerous other roles. In 2002, Chamitoff was a crewmember on the NEEMO-3 Mission (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations), living and working on the Aquarius undersea research habitat for 9 days. 

Chamitoff is the William Keeler ‘49 Chair Professor of Practice in Aerospace Engineering, and Director of the Aero-Space Technology Research & Operations (ASTRO) Laboratory at Texas A&M University. He is co-author and co-editor of Human Spaceflight Operations, a textbook on the lessons learned from the past 60 years of spaceflight. His research includes space robotics, autonomous systems, and the development of collaborative virtual simulation environments for space system engineering and mission design.

Contact Information: chamitoff@tamu.edu