Ad astra rocket company franklin chang biography

Costa Rican-American astronaut and entrepreneur (born 1950)

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Chang and the second or maternal family name is Díaz.

Franklin Ramon Chang-Díaz (born April 5, 1950, San José, Costa Rica) is an American mechanical engineer, physicist, and former NASA astronaut. He is the sole founder and CEO of Ad Astra Rocket Company as well as a member of the Cummins' board of directors. He became an American citizen in 1977.

He is a veteran of seven Space Shuttle missions, tying the record, as of 2021 for the most spaceflights (a record set two months earlier by Jerry L. Ross). He was the third Latin American, and the first Latin American immigrant NASA astronaut selected to go into space. Chang-Díaz is a member of NASA's Astronaut Hall of Fame.

Family and education

Franklin Ramón Chang-Díaz was born in San José, Costa Rica on April 5, 1950, to Ramón Ángel Chang Morales, an oil worker whose own father fled from China during the Boxer Rebellion, and María Eugenia Díaz. One of six children, he has a younger sister, Sonia Rosa (born December 1952) and his mother, brothers and sisters still reside in Costa Rica. His two eldest daughters with his ex-wife Candice Chang, include Sonia Rosa, who is a member of the Massachusetts Senate. He married Dr. Peggy Marguerite Doncaster (née Stafford, of Alexandria, Louisiana), in the United States, on December 17, 1984. They have two daughters, both born in Houston, Texas.

He graduated from Colegio de La Salle in San Jose with an "A" grade in November 1967, then moved to the United States to finish his high school education at Hartford Public High School in Connecticut, in 1969. He went on to attend the University of Connecticut, where he earned a B.S.

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Biography of Franklin Chang-Diaz

Franklin Chang-Díaz is an astronaut, rocket scientist and a new space entrepreneur. He was born April 5, 1950, in San José, Costa Rica and, after completing his secondary education, immigrated to the United States in 1868 to pursue his dream of space flight. After learning English as a senior student at Hartford Public High School he earned a scholarship to the University of Connecticut where he obtained a BS in mechanical engineering. He continued his education at MIT, obtaining a PhD in applied plasma physics in 1977. He became a US citizen that same year.

After MIT, Dr. Chang-Díaz joined the technical staff of the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory where he continued his research in plasmas and fusion technology. In May of 1980 he was selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate and in August of 1981 received his astronaut wings. He completed a record 7 missions in space before leaving NASA for the private sector in July of 2005. He is the founder and current Chairman and CEO of Ad Astra Rocket Company, www.adastrarocket.com a private firm specializing in advanced plasma rockets based in Houston Texas, with research operations in Houston and Costa Rica. He continues to serve in academia as an Adjunct Professor of Physics at Rice University and the University of Houston. He is married to the former Peggy Marguerite Doncaster of Alexandria, Louisiana and has four daughters: Jean Elizabeth (32) Sonia Rosa (28), Lidia Aurora (18) and Miranda Karina (11). He enjoys music, flying and scuba-diving. His mother, brothers and sisters still reside in Costa Rica.

American rocket propulsion company

Not to be confused with Astra (American spaceflight company).

The Ad Astra Rocket Company, a U.S. Delaware corporation, is a rocket propulsion company dedicated to the development of advanced plasma rocket propulsion technology. Located in Webster, Texas, three miles away from NASA's Johnson Space Center, and Liberia, Costa Rica, the company was incorporated on January 14, 2005. The President and CEO of Ad Astra Rocket Company is retired astronaut Franklin Chang-Díaz. The company has been working on Chang-Díaz's concept of the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket, known by its acronym VASIMR. The VASIMR is intended to achieve several advantages over current chemical rocket designs, including lunar cargo transport, in-space refueling, and ultra-high speeds for distant space missions.

The Ad Astra Rocket Company Costa Rica (AARC CR) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ad Astra Rocket Company. AARC CR was formed in 2005. The facility is located approximately 10 km west of the city of Liberia, capital of the province of Guanacaste, on the campus of EARTH University. On December 13, 2006, the Costa Rican team of AARC generated its first plasma. After extensive testing of a 200 kW ground-test VASIMR unit, the company is aiming for a three-year flight test mission.

In March 2015, NASA selected Ad Astra for the NextSTEP program. The partnership is currently ongoing as of July 2021, with Ad Astra aiming to achieve the NASA-set goal of firing VASIMR continuously for 100 hours at 100 kW in the second half of 2021.

History

The VASIMR is a state-of-the-art rocket design that uses plasma for rocket propulsion. Chang-Díaz developed the concept of the VASIMR in 1979, shortly following his graduate research in fusion and plasma-based rocket propulsion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After