Former NASA astronaut nominated to SCI Board of Directors

Service Corporation International (SCI), the largest provider of deathcare products and services in North America, announced Tuesday that it will nominate Ellen Ochoa to be elected to the SCI Board of Directors at the company's Annual Meeting of Shareholders to be held in May.

Ochoa is the director of NASA's Johnson Space Center, a position she has held since 2013. She has served NASA as a manager, astronaut and engineer.  Earlier in her career, she researched optical systems for performing information processing at Sandia National Laboratories. Ochoa holds a Master of Science Degree and Doctorate in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Physics from San Diego State University. She would serve on SCI's board in her personal capacity.

Ochoa has received numerous awards and honors, including the Harvard Foundation Science Award, Women in Aerospace Outstanding Award, the Hispanic Engineer Albert Baez Award for Outstanding Technical Contribution to Humanity, the Hispanic Heritage Leadership Award, and San Diego State University Alumna of the Year. She is a member of the Optical Society of America, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi honor societies. Ochoa currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (Houston Branch).

Fifth astronaut candidate selected for Citizens in Space program

Citizens in Space, a project of the United States Rocket Academy, has announced the selection of its fifth citizen-astronaut candidate.

Informal educator and aerospace historian Greg Kennedy will join four other citizen-astronaut candidates who are training to fly as payload operators on the Lynx spacecraft, currently under construction by XCOR Aerospace in Mojave, Calif. XCOR expects to begin Lynx test flights later this year.

Citizens in Space has purchased 10 flights on the XCOR Lynx spacecraft. To fill those flights, Citizens in Space is seeking 100 citizen-science experiments and 10 citizen astronauts to fly as payload operators.

Greg Kennedy is currently director of education at NASTAR Center, a leading provider of spaceflight training for commercial vehicles, in Southampton, Pa. Previously, he was associate curator for manned spaceflight at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.; director of the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas; founding director of the American Airlines C.R. Smith Museum in Fort Worth; executive director of the Space Center in Alamogordo, N.M.; executive director of the Mid Atlantic Air Museum in Liberal, Kan.; and executive director of the American Helicopter Museum in West Chester, Pa.

Kennedy is a noted aerospace historian whose books include Touching Space: The Story of Project Manhigh, Apollo to the Moon, The First Men in Space; Rockets and Missiles of White Sands Proving Ground, and Vengeance Weapon Two: Germany's V-2 Rocket. He was also a co-author of The Space Shuttle Operator's Manual and Rockets, Missiles, and Spacecraft of the National Air and Space Museum.

Kennedy is a qualified spacesuit technician and commercial spaceflight instructor. At NASTAR Center, he conducts training for commercial spaceflight participants and suborbital scientists, along with various workshops and summer-camp programs which he has created for teachers and students.

Current citizen-astronaut candidates include Maureen Adams, an elementary-school teacher and principle from Killeen, Texas; Michael Johnson, an aviation instructor from Dallas, Texas; Lt. Col. Steve Heck (USAF-ret.), and Edward Wright.

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University of Illinois football captain turned NASA astronaut

NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins, a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, is in the final phase of his mission training as he and his crewmates, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy, prepare for their Sept. 25 launch to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Hopkins enjoys numerous fitness-related hobbies such as weight lifting, hockey and football -- he was captain of the University of Illinois football team. To share his passion for lifelong fitness, Hopkins is inviting the public to train alongside him in the months leading up to his mission, while in space and through his post-flight rehabilitation.

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An astronaut's guide to life on Earth

Random House Canada is proud to announce that it will publish Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield's first book on Oct. 29. The book, "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth," is the first in a two-book agreement that was completed with literary agent Rick Broadhead of Rick Broadhead & Associates.

“Chris has a delightful capacity to bring home the fascinating details of what it takes to be an astronaut and what it's like to live in microgravity, and then to dig deeper into all the surprising training and lessons learned that help him, and the whole astronaut corps, do the impossible as if it's another day at work,” said Anne Collins, the publisher of the Knopf Random Canada Publishing Group. Collins is working on the book with Hadfield.

Chris Hadfield

Chris Hadfield was a top graduate of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School in 1988 and U.S. Navy test pilot of the year in 1991, Hadfield was selected by the Canadian Space Agency to be an astronaut in 1992. He was Capsule Communicator for 25 shuttle launches and served as director of NASA Operations in Star City, Russia from 2001-2003, Chief of Robotics at the Johnson SpaceCenter in Houston from 2003-2006, and Chief of International Space Station Operations from 2006-2008. Hadfield most recently served as commander of the International Space Station where, while conducting a record-setting number of scientific experiments and overseeing an emergency spacewalk, he gained worldwide acclaim for his breathtaking photographs and educational videos about life in space. His music video, a zero-gravity version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," received over 10 million views in its first three days online.

In “An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth,” Hadfield takes readers deep into his years of training and space exploration to show how to make the impossible possible. Through eye-opening, entertaining stories filled with the adrenaline of launch, the mesmerizing wonder of spacewalks, and the measured, calm responses mandated by crises, he explains how conventional wisdom can get in the way of real achievement--and happiness. His own extraordinary education in space has taught him some counter-intuitive lessons: don't visualize success, do care what others think, and always sweat the small stuff.

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