Michael Fincke, who is married to Renita Saikia, of Houston is the Flight Engineer and Space Station Science Officer of Expedition 9, is scheduled to take off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on April 18 at approximately 11:19 p.m. EDT, aboard a Soyuz vehicle for the two-day trip leading to a six-month tour of duty aboard the International Space Station. Russian Gennady Padalka is the Expedition 9 Commander. NASA astronaut European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andre Kuipers of the Netherlands will join them.
Michael Fincke, who is married to Renita, daughter of Rupesh Saikia of Alabama, is going to carry an Assamese gamosa with him into space. He is a source of great pride to all Assamse in North America and in fact a great source of pride for all Assamese everywhere. Michael Fincke was born on March 14, 1967 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Mr. Fincke enjoys hiking, flying, travel, Geology, Astronomy, learning new languages, and reading. He is conversant in Japanese and Russian. .
Michael Fincke graduated the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in
1989 with a bachelor of science in Aeronautics and Astronautics as well as a
bachelor of science in Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. He then
received a Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford
University in 1990 and second master of science in Physical Sciences (Planetary
Geology) from the University of Houston, Clear Lake in 2001.
Lt Col Fincke has over 800 flight hours in more than 30 different aircraft types.
Selected by NASA in April 1996, Mr. Fincke started working at the Johnson
Space Center in August 1996. He was assigned technical duties in the Astronaut
Office Station Operations Branch serving as an International Space Station
Spacecraft Communicator (ISS CAPCOM), a member of the Crew Test Support
Team in Russia and as the ISS crew procedures team lead. In July 1999, Mr.
Fincke was assigned as backup crew member for the International Space Station
Expedition 4 crew. Additionally he served as a backup for the ISS Expedition 6
crew and is qualified to fly as a left-seat Flight Engineer (co-pilot) on the Russian
Soyuz spacecraft.
(- by Jugal Kalita with help from NASA’s astronaut biography at
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/fincke.html)
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