BIO
Christopher J. Ferguson
Born on 1 September 1951, Ferguson is a retired US Navy Captain and NASA astronaut. He was the pilot on STS-115 in September 2006 and commander for STS-126 in November 2008 before serving as the final Space Shuttle commander aboard Atlantis for the STS-135 mission in July 2011. He now works at Boeing, where he has helped build a new generation of space vehicles with their CST-100 capsule under contract from NASA.
Why did you decide to become an astronaut?
I’ve always had this fascination with things I didn’t completely understand. I spent a lot of time in the Navy only because I could never really understand how an aircraft carrier worked, I thought it was just one of the most intriguing places on Earth. So I was in the Navy for a good 15 years and then the next logical step, the next thing I really couldn’t understand, was what it’s like to operate in space. As I matured in my Navy career I realised I had been through most of the steps the early astronauts had done, and I thought I’d give it a go.
