Oh, Canada! First Canadian ISS Commander Scheduled to Take the Reins Today

Photo Credit: NASA
Photo Credit: NASA

History was made some 260 miles up with the change of command that took place on the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday. Veteran Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield became the first Canadian to take command of the orbiting outpost when the outgoing commander, NASA astronaut Kevin Ford, handed over responsibility for the space station Wednesday, March 13.

The transfer went a little less smoothly than planned, with the delay of Ford and fellow Expedition 34 crew members Evgeny Tarelkin and Oleg Novitskiy, who had their trip back to terra firma delayed by a day due to bad weather at the landing site in Kazakhstan.

Hadfield, along with Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko, will then begin the Expedition 35 mission. The station will maintain a three-person crew until March 28, when Chris Cassidy, Pavel Vinogradov, and Alexander Misurkin arrive aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Missions » ISS »

One Comment

  1. Those of us in Detroit extend our heatfelt congratulations to our esteemed and repected neighbors to the south. Canada can take justifiable pride in one of its finest sons! I’ll bet when you return home, that first Molsons is going to taste great, eh?

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