Chris Austin Hadfield is a Canadian retired astronaut, engineer, fighter pilot, musician, and writer. As the first Canadian to perform extravehicular activity in outer space, he has flown two Space Shuttle missions and also served as commander of the International Space Station (ISS). Prior to his career as an astronaut, he served in the Canadian Armed Forces for 25 years as an Air Command fighter pilot.
Hadfield has cited part of his career inspiration to have come to him as a child, when he watched the first crewed Moon landing by American spaceflight Apollo 11 on television. He attended high school in Oakville and Milton in southern Ontario, and earned his glider pilot licence as a member of the Royal Canadian Air Cadets. After enlisting in the Canadian Armed Forces, he earned an engineering degree at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario. Hadfield learned to fly various types of aircraft in the military and eventually became a test pilot, flying several experimental planes.