Michael Barratt (astronaut)

Did You Know?

• His personal interests include family and church activities, writing, sailing, and boat restoration and maintenance.
• He and his wife reside in League City, Texas, and have five children.

Education

Barratt graduated from Camas High School in 1977. He earned a Bachelor of Science in zoology from the University of Washington in 1981 and an M.D. from Northwestern University in 1985. In 1991 he completed a residency and Master of Science in aerospace medicine jointly run by Wright State University, NASA, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He is board certified in internal and aerospace medicine and holds a private pilot's license, qualified on NASA's T-38 Talons.

NASA career

Barratt began at NASA's Johnson Space Center in May 1991 as a project physician for KRUG Life Sciences, managing the Hyperbaric and Respiratory Subsystems for the Space Station Freedom project. In July 1992 he was hired as an aviation medical examiner in Space Shuttle Medical Operations. In July 1993 he was among the first three Americans invited to witness a Soyuz recovery, flying with the team that retrieved the crew of Soyuz TM-16 in Kazakhstan to evaluate the Soyuz as a Crew Return Vehicle.

In January 1994 he joined the Shuttle-Mir Program, spending over 12 months training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia as a flight surgeon supporting Norman Thagard and his backup Bonnie Dunbar, often negotiating medical differences between NASA and Russian doctors. From July 1995 through July 1998 he was medical operations lead for the ISS, traveling frequently to Russia to develop medical procedures, training, and equipment with partners at Star City and the Institute of Biomedical Problems.

He served as lead crew surgeon for ISS Expedition 1 from July 1998 until selected as an astronaut candidate in July 2000 as part of Astronaut Group 18. After training, he was assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Station Operations Branch. He also serves as associate editor for space medicine for Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine and is senior editor of the textbook Principles of Clinical Medicine for Space Flight.