Mike Hopkins (astronaut)

Did You Know?

• He was received into the Catholic Church in 2013, joining his wife and children who are Catholics.
• On his first mission to the ISS, his pastor arranged for him to bring the Eucharist so that he could have Communion once a week.

Biography

Michael Scott Hopkins entered the world on December 28, 1968, in Lebanon, Missouri, and was raised on a family farm in Richland, Missouri, within a United Methodist household. He completed high school at the School of the Osage in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, in 1987, then enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his college years, he played as a defensive back for the Illinois Fighting Illini football team and received the Big Ten Medal of Honor, an award given annually to one male and one female graduate from each Big Ten school for outstanding achievement in both athletics and academics. He earned a Bachelor of Science in aerospace engineering in 1991, followed by a Master of Science in the same field from Stanford University in 1992.

Hopkins obtained his U.S. Air Force commission through the Air Force ROTC program at the University of Illinois, where he was recognized as a distinguished graduate, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in January 1992. His early Air Force service placed him at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he worked on advanced space system technologies. In 1996, he attended the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School as a flight test engineer, graduating with distinction as the top flight test engineer in class 96B.

Afterward, he joined the 418th Flight Test Squadron, testing C-17 and C-130 aircraft. In 1999, he participated in an exchange program with Canada, residing in Cold Lake, Alberta, and working at the Canadian Flight Test Center. In 2002, the George and Carol Olmsted Foundation selected him as an Olmsted Scholar, sending him to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, for language study. Following six months of language training, he moved to Parma, Italy, to study political science at the Università degli Studi di Parma.

In 2005, he was assigned to the U.S. Air Force Rapid Capabilities Project Office at the Pentagon, serving as a project engineer and program manager. In 2008, he became a Special Assistant to General James Cartwright, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. While in this role with the Joint Chiefs, he was selected as an astronaut candidate.

NASA career

Mike Hopkins became a NASA astronaut in 2009 as part of the nine-member Astronaut Group 20. That year, he started training at the Johnson Space Center alongside his group and five international mission specialists. His training lasted until November 2011, covering scientific and technical briefings, detailed work on International Space Station systems, spacewalk practice, robotics, physiology, T-38 jet flights, and survival training in water and wilderness. After finishing, he was available for other roles in the Astronaut Office and eligible for a future spaceflight.

In February 2011, Hopkins got his first flight assignment: he joined the crew of ISS Expedition 37/38, making him the first from his astronaut class to receive such a mission. He then trained with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazansky for a long stay on the station. On September 25, 2013, the three launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-10M spacecraft. They docked with the International Space Station hours later, joining the Expedition 37 crew, which included Roscosmos cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, and ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano. Just before their arrival, the station crew had welcomed the Orbital Sciences Corporation Orb-D1 mission, the first test flight of Orbital's Cygnus unmanned cargo spacecraft under the Commercial Resupply Services contract.

After Soyuz TMA-09M departed with Yurchikin, Nyberg, and Parmitano, Hopkins and his two crewmates became part of Expedition 38, with Kotov taking command of the station. Shortly before that departure, the remaining three Expedition 38 members had arrived on Soyuz TMA-11M: Roscosmos cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, and JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata. This unusual direct handover allowed the Soyuz TMA-11M crew to bring an Olympic torch to the station, which the departing Soyuz TMA-09M crew returned to Earth days later as part of the Olympic Torch Relay for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.