Michael López-Alegría

Michael E. López-Alegría was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1958 and raised in the United States, becoming the first Spanish-born person to fly in space. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and became a naval aviator and engineering test pilot, later earning a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. After years of test-flight work, he was selected by NASA as an astronaut in 1992. Fluent in English, Spanish, Russian, and French, he brought an international dimension to the corps that would later serve him well in both Russian-partnered station operations and the emerging world of commercial spaceflight.

Across a career spanning nearly three decades, López-Alegría flew five times. He debuted on STS-73 aboard Columbia in 1995, a sixteen-day Spacelab mission devoted to microgravity science, then flew STS-92 aboard Discovery in 2000, an assembly flight that delivered the Z1 truss to the International Space Station and on which he conducted his first two spacewalks. His signature mission came in 2006–2007 as commander of ISS Expedition 14, launched aboard Soyuz TMA-9: he spent about 215 days aloft, then a record for the longest single spaceflight by an American, and performed five more spacewalks. After retiring from NASA he returned to orbit in the commercial era, commanding Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) in April 2022, the first all-private crew ever to visit the ISS, and Axiom Mission 3 (Ax-3) in January 2024, the first all-European commercial mission to the station.

López-Alegría holds the American record for the greatest cumulative spacewalking time, 67 hours and 40 minutes. His ten career spacewalks tie the American record for the most EVAs by count, a mark he shares atop the U.S. list with Bob Behnken, Peggy Whitson, and Chris Cassidy. With well over 6,500 hours in space across five flights, he is among the most experienced astronauts of his generation and one of the very few to command missions in both the government and private-sector eras of human spaceflight. Recognized with the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, honored in Spain as a pioneering native son, and inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2021, he is now retired from active flying but remains a leading advocate for commercial human spaceflight and for STEM outreach in Spanish-speaking communities.