Mike Fincke

Edward Michael "Mike" Fincke was born on March 14, 1967, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and considers nearby Emsworth his hometown. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on an Air Force ROTC scholarship, graduating in 1989 with dual bachelor's degrees, one in aeronautics and astronautics and another in Earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences, and took part in a summer exchange at the Moscow Aviation Institute to study cosmonautics, an early sign of the U.S.-Russian collaboration that would define his career. Commissioned in the U.S. Air Force, he served as a space systems engineer and flight test engineer, ultimately logging more than 2,000 flight hours in over 30 aircraft types before NASA selected him in 1996. A lifelong Star Trek fan with an amateur geologist's eye, Fincke also became fluent in Russian and conversant in Japanese, skills that would serve him across a career spanning both Soyuz and Space Shuttle.

Fincke has flown four times over more than two decades. On Expedition 9 in 2004 he served as flight engineer and NASA science officer for a 188-day stay, performing four spacewalks; six of his nine career EVAs would ultimately be conducted in the Russian Orlan suit, more than any other American. One of those early Orlan spacewalks was cut short by a pressure problem in his suit before the planned work could be completed. During that same mission his second daughter, Tarali, was born back in Houston, and Fincke listened in from orbit over a NASA radio link, in what NASA believed to be the first time a U.S. astronaut was in space for the birth of his child. He returned as commander of Expedition 18 in 2008-09, preparing the station for the transition to six-person crews, then flew as a mission specialist, spacewalker, and robotic-arm operator on STS-134 in 2011, the final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour, which delivered the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the ISS. After a 14-year gap he launched a fourth time on August 1, 2025, as pilot of SpaceX Crew-11, his first Dragon flight.

That fourth mission ended earlier than planned. In January 2026 Fincke experienced a medical event aboard the station, and though he recovered, NASA elected to bring the crew home, its first medical evacuation from the ISS; the decision also scrubbed a spacewalk he and commander Zena Cardman had been set to make. The crew splashed down after 167 days. Across his four flights Fincke has accumulated roughly 549 days in space, ranking among the most experienced NASA astronauts of all time, and completed nine spacewalks totaling about 48 hours. He once held the American record for cumulative time in space, 382 days, until Scott Kelly surpassed it in October 2015, and his Orlan spacewalking tally remains a distinctive mark of an unusually cross-cultural career. His flight history spans Soyuz, Space Shuttle, and Crew Dragon, a range few astronauts can match. Now an active senior member of the astronaut corps, Fincke serves as a bridge between the Shuttle and ISS eras and the commercial-crew present, and as a mentor whose experience continues to shape the fliers coming up behind him.