As an undergraduate student at Cal Poly, Chamitoff taught lab courses in circuit design and worked summer internships at Four Phase Systems, Atari Computers, Northern Telecom, and IBM. He developed a self-guided robot for his undergraduate thesis project. While at MIT and Draper Labs (1985-1992), Chamitoff worked on several NASA projects. He performed stability analysis for the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope, designed flight control upgrades for the Space Shuttle autopilot, and developed attitude control system software for the Space Station. In his doctoral thesis, he developed a new approach for robust intelligent flight control of hypersonic vehicles. From 1993 to 1995, Dr. Chamitoff was a visiting professor at the University of Sydney, Australia, where he led a research group in the development of autonomous flight vehicles, and taught courses in flight dynamics and control. He has published numerous papers on aircraft and spacecraft guidance and control, trajectory optimization, and Mars mission design.

In 1995, Chamitoff joined Mission Operations at the Johnson Space Center, where he developed software applications for spacecraft attitude control monitoring, prediction, analysis, and maneuver optimization.

Selected by NASA for the Astronaut Class of 1998, Dr. Chamitoff started training in August 1998 and qualified for flight assignment as a Mission Specialist in 2000. His assignments within the astronaut office have included Space Station procedure and display development, crew support for ISS Expedition 6, lead CAPCOM for ISS Expedition 9, and Space Station Robotics.

In July 2002, Dr. Chamitoff was a crew-member on the Aquarius undersea research habitat for 9 days as part of the NEEMO 3 mission (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations).

Dr. Chamitoff is currently serving a six month tour of duty aboard the International Space Station as Expedition 17 ISS Flight Engineer and Science Officer. He launched to the station with the crew of STS-124 on May 31, 2008, docking with the station on June 2, 2008. He will return to Earth on shuttle mission STS-126, November 2008.

+ go to top