and the first Canadian to perform a space walk. He is the chief astronaut for the Canadian Space Agency. In November 1995 he was the first Canadian to operate the robotic Canadarm while in orbit, during his first space shuttle flight on Atlantis. He also flew with the Endeavour mission in April 2001 to deliver Canadarm 2 to the International Space Station. During the same mission he performed two space walks to unfold the device. From 2001 to 2003, he was NASA's director of operations at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, and then trained and qualified as a cosmonaut to fly as a flight engineer on future Soyuz missions. On 19 December 2012, Hadfield flew to the ISS on a Soyuz spacecraft as part of Expedition 35, and became the first Canadian to command the ISS when the crew of Expedition 34 departed in March 2013. He became very popular during that mission by releasing a music video of him paying tribute to David Bowie with a rendition of ‘Space Oddity’ on the guitar.

He was selected as a Canadian astronaut in 1992 and began training at NASA's Johnson Space Center the same year.