Introduction to Astronautics and Spaceflight

Dr. Jeffrey Hoffman is a distinguished professor in MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, combining remarkable achievements as both astronaut and academic. After earning degrees from Amherst College, Harvard University, and Rice University, he served as a NASA astronaut from 1978 to 1997, completing five space flights and becoming the first astronaut to log 1000 hours aboard the Space Shuttle. His groundbreaking missions included performing the first unplanned contingency spacewalk in NASA's history and participating in the initial Hubble Space Telescope repair mission. As Payload Commander of STS-46, he led the first flight of the US-Italian Tethered Satellite System and completed four spacewalks total. Following his NASA career, which included four years as NASA's European Representative in Paris, he joined MIT's faculty in 2001, where he teaches space operations and systems design. Currently, he serves as Director of the Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium and Deputy Principal Investigator for the MOXIE experiment on NASA's Mars 2020 mission, which has achieved the historic milestone of producing oxygen from Martian atmosphere. His research focuses on advancing space suit technology and designing innovative systems for human and robotic space exploration. His contributions to space exploration were recognized with his 2007 induction into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame.