Life and Career
Born in Louth, England (where Michael Foale Lane is named after him), to English father Colin and American mother Mary, he was raised in Cambridge and educated at The King's School, Canterbury. A member of the Air Training Corps, he studied at Queens' College, Cambridge, (with Stephen Fry who when he told him he was going to space mocked him) receiving a doctorate in laboratory astrophysics in 1982. When he left university he: "owned two pairs of jeans, a donkey jacket, a bicycle and a pilot’s licence; which shows I had my priorities absolutely right.”
Foale joined the mission operations directorate of NASA in Houston in 1983 aged 26, working on the shuttle's navigation system. Born with dual-UK/US citizenship, he applied and was turned down twice as an astronaut candidate. After the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in January 1986, Foale changed his application essay from writing about his dreams to focusing on the realities of leadership faced by NASA, and was selected in 1987.
He flew on space shuttle missions STS-45 (1992), STS-56 (1993) and STS-63 (1995). In the last mission he undertook a four-hour EVA. He was then selected for an extended mission aboard the Russian Mir space station.
Launched by STS-84 and returned by STS-86, Foale spent four months on Mir in 1997 during the Mir 23 and Mir 24 missions. During Mir 23, the station was struck by a Progress resupply vessel. Using knowledge from his physics degree Foale made calculations of how the stars were moving past his fixed-point thumb reference on a window, and was thus able to advise Russian ground control of how to stop the resulting roll. The two Russian cosmonauts of Mir 23, Vasily Tsibliyev and Aleksandr Lazutkin, conducted an intravehicular activity (IVA) to inspect the collision damage from the interior of the space station. During Mir 24, Foale and Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyev conducted a six-hour EVA in the Russian Orlan spacesuit to inspect exterior damage to the station's Spektr module. For his efforts, he was awarded the Yuri A. Gagarin Gold Medal by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
In 1999, Foale was a member of space shuttle mission STS-103, during which he conducted an eight-hour spacewalk to replace components of the Hubble Space Telescope. In 2003, Foale was named commander of International Space Station Expedition 8 with cosmonaut Aleksandr Kaleri. Their six-month tour of duty on the station ended on April 29, 2004. For about a year, Foale was Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Operations at NASA HQ, Washington D.C. He currently supports Soyuz and ISS operations and spacesuit development for NASA in Houston.
Foale was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Lincolnshire and Humberside in July 2000 and an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Kent in September 2000. He was named a Commander in the Order of the British Empire in the diplomatic list of the New Year Honours in December 2004.
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