Stargazing Guy

Follow for a weekly list of forthcoming astronaut* birthdays.

Maybe you share a birthday?!

If not, perhaps it will be you who adds your name to the list?!

If you do share a birthday, what does it mean to you?

Do you feel a connection, pride? They take to the skies (on controlled explosions) to improve the world, to explore (to travel to strange new worlds).

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2 May 1975 Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger (NASA) US. Quick error correction. I originally had Metcalf-Lindenburger down with a date of birth (DOB) of 15 May 1975, but supercluster.com and spacefacts.de both confirm the DOB as 2 May 1975.

13 May 1942 Vladimir Dzhanibekov (RKA) Uzbekistan. The tennis racket theorem or intermediate axis theorem, is a kinetic phenomenon of classical mechanics which describes the movement of a rigid body with three distinct principal moments of inertia. It has also dubbed the Dzhanibekov effect, after the cosmonaut, who noticed one of the theorem’s logical consequences whilst in space in 1985. Formally the effect had been known for at least 150 years, having been described by Louis Poinsot in 1834:

Credit: Dzhanibekov effect demonstration in microgravity, NASA.(Tennis racket theorem) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x5UiwEEvpQ

13 May 1956 Aleksandr Kaleri (RKA) Latvia.

13 May 1957 Claudie André-Deshays Haigneré (ESA) France. Out of 10,000 candidates, France’s space center selected only six men and one woman: Claudie Haigneré. She first qualified as an engineer and emergency pilot to the Space Shuttle. She first served as a back-up crew member for the 1993 Mir Altaïr mission in which her future husband Jean-Pierre Haigneré (see below as he was born on 19 May 1948) participated.

14 May 1952 Donald McMonagle (NASA) US.

14 May 1957 William G. Gregory (NASA) US.

14 May 1964 James M. Kelly (NASA) US.

15 May 1942 Anthony W. England (NASA) US.

15 May 1949 Frank L. Culbertson (NASA) US.

16 May 1945 Brewster Shaw (NASA) US.

16 May 1954 Dafydd Williams (CSA) Canada.

17 May 1967 Joseph M. Acaba (NASA) US.

18 May 1930 Don L. Lind (NASA) US.

19 May 1939 Richard Scobee (NASA) US. Scobee was killed while commanding his ship, the Space Shuttle Challenger on 28 January 1986, which suffered catastrophic booster failure during launch of the STS-51-L mission.

Source: https://images.nasa.gov/details-s78-35293

Space is hard and the people who do mighty things risk their lives for science, humanity and the exploration of space.

Ad astra per aspera.

19 May 1948 Jean-Pierre Haigneré (CNES) France. On 20 February 1999, Haignere was the first non-Russian to be launched as Soyuz flight engineer to the Russian Mir space station on a mission called Perseus. During his flight, Haigneré carried out a spacewalk (EVA) to perform biological and comet dust experiments outside Mir. Haigneré also worked as flight engineer for the Mir Space Station. Perseus was a long-duration flight of nearly 189 days. The landing took place on 28 August 1999. It is the longest flight ever performed by a non-Russian astronaut and he is credited with taking the first picture of the shadow of a Solar eclipse from space. He is married to former French astronaut Claudie Haigneré (see above as she was born on 13 May 1957). The asteroid 135268 Haigneré is named in their combined honour.

19 May 1955 Pierre Thuot (NASA) US.

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Thanks to www.supercluster.com for the bios and links.

Also, thanks to www.pillownaut.com for the initial list of birthdays, and the many, many resources on the internet, especially Wikipedia and NASA.      

* = includes cosmonaut, taikonaut, parastronaut, spaceflight participant, space tourist, etc

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PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message with a date and time and we can share it, remotely, at the same time, and think about the Cosmos.

In the meantime, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else, too, because as Adam Smith said, “we naturally desire not only to be loved but to be lovely”.

Remember, hope lives here.

Contact Stargazing Guy for any copyright-related requests or queries @ stargazer1@stargazingguy.co.uk