|
Franklin Ramón Chang Díaz, Sc.D. (born 5 April 1950) is a Costa Rican-American physicist and astronaut. He participated in seven NASA space shuttle missions. He is the first Hispanic-American U.S. citizen to go in space. Chang-Diaz was born in San José, Costa Rica to a Chinese-Hispanic father and Hispanic mother, and moved to the United States to finish his high school education. He earned a BS degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Connecticut in 1973, and a Sc.D. in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1977. For his graduate research at MIT, Chang-Diaz worked in the field of fusion technology and plasma-based rocket propulsion. Chang-Diaz was selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA in 1980 and first flew aboard STS-61-C in 1986. Subsequent missions include STS-34 (1989), STS-46 (1992), STS-60 (1994), STS-75 (1996), STS-91 (1998) and STS-111 (2002). During STS-111, he performed three EVAs with Philippe Perrin as part of the construction of the International Space Station. Chang-Diaz is also an adjunct professor of physics at Rice University and at the University of Houston, and director of the Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center. He is currently testing a prototype of the VASIMR rocket in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Because of his career and scientific success, he has been decorated multiple times in Costa Rica and named a national hero - Benemérito de la Patria - and the National Center of High Technology, among other institutions, is named after him. His daughter, Sonia Chang-Diaz, recently ran for the office of State Senator from Massachusetts in 2006.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
| |