Chris Hadfield

Overview

Submitted by guitar-list on Tue, 2013-07-30 08:00

musical style:

Space Rock

photograph of Chris Hadfield

Chris Hadfield (born 29 August 1959 in Sarnia, Ontario) is a Canadian astronaut who was the first Canadian to walk in space. A former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot, Hadfield has flown two space shuttle missions, STS-74 in 1995 and STS-100 in 2001, and served as capsule communicator for both Space Shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) expeditions. On 19 December 2012, Hadfield launched in the Soyuz TMA-07M flight for a long duration stay on board the ISS as part of Expedition 35. He arrived at the station on 21 December, as scheduled, and became the first Canadian to command the ISS when the crew of Expedition 34 departed. He has received significant media exposure during his time on the ISS, and ended his time on the station by paying tribute to David Bowie with a rendition of "Space Oddity".

Hadfield was described as "perhaps the most social media savvy astronaut ever to leave Earth" by Forbes after building a considerable audience on social media, including over 850,000 Twitter followers as of May 2013, and creating one of the top Reddit AmA threads of all time. Hadfield has enlisted the help of his web-savvy sons Evan and Kyle to manage his social media presence.

Hadfield is currently working on the first original music album to be recorded in orbit during his free time on Expedition 35. He will be recording the album using a Larrivée Parlor guitar, Shure microphones, and Cakewalk for recording. The first song recorded in space, Jewel in the Night, was released via YouTube on Christmas Eve 2012. His collaboration with Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies and the Wexford Gleeks, Is Somebody Singing? (sometimes shortened I.S.S.), was aired on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio program Q and released by CBC Music online on 8 February 2013. Hadfield sang Is Somebody Singing along with singers across Canada for the national Music Monday program. Hadfield has been credited musically on his brother Dave Hadfield's albums.

On 12 May 2013, after handing over command of the ISS before returning home, he released a music video recorded on the ISS of a modified rendition of "Space Oddity" by David Bowie. Read more about Chris Hadfield on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.