Clayton Anderson

Clayton Conrad Anderson is an American astronaut, born on 23 February 1959 in Omaha, Nebraska. He earned a bachelor of science in physics from Hastings College in 1981 and a master of science in aerospace engineering from Iowa State University in 1983. When he was chosen for the astronaut program he was Manager of the Emergency Operations Center at NASA's Johnson Space Center, after an unsuccessful application to the sixteenth astronaut group. NASA selected him on 4 June 1998 in its seventeenth group. His first flight began with Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-117 on 8 June 2007; he served on the International Space Station as flight engineer for Expeditions 15 and 16 and returned aboard Discovery on STS-120 on 7 November 2007, 151 days later. He flew again on Discovery on STS-131 from 5 to 20 April 2010, for 166 days 21 hours in space overall, and retired in June 2011.