Tim Kopra | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 2008 | |
| Born | Timothy Lennart Kopra (1963-04-09)April 9, 1963 (age 62) Austin, Texas, U.S. |
| Education | United States Military Academy (BS) Georgia Institute of Technology (MS) United States Army War College (MS) University of London (MBA) Columbia University (MBA) |
| Space career | |
| NASA astronaut | |
| Rank | Colonel,USA |
Time in space | 244d 1h 1m |
| Selection | NASA Group 18 (2000) |
TotalEVAs | 3 |
Total EVA time | 13h 31m |
| Missions | STS-127/128 (Expedition 20) Soyuz TMA-19M (Expedition 46/47) |
Mission insignia |      |
Timothy Lennart "Tim"Kopra (born April 9, 1963) is an Americanengineer, acolonel in theUnited States Army, and a retiredNASAastronaut. He served aboard theInternational Space Station as a flight engineer forExpedition 20, returning to Earth aboardSpace ShuttleDiscovery on theSTS-128 mission on September 11, 2009. He returned to the ISS for the second time in December 2015, as part ofExpedition 46 and as the commander of47.
In 2020, he was announced as the vice president of robotics and space operations at MDA Corporation.[1]
Kopra was born inAustin, Texas. Kopra is married to Dawn Kaye Lehman ofLewisburg, Kentucky, and they have two children, Matthew and Jacqueline. His mother, Martha A. Witthoft Kopra, resides inAustin, Texas. His father, Dr. Lennart L. Kopra, died December 8, 1998. He is ofFinnish descent on his father's side. His grandfather, Antti Kopra, born in Laavola,Valkjärvi,Karelia, and his grandmother, Ester Elisabet Saksinen, born inHelsinki, leftFinland in 1914, immigrating to the United States. Kopra's father spokeFinnish, but Tim does not speak the language.[2][3] On his mother's side, Kopra is of German descent. His German ancestors arrived in New York in the colonial period in the 1700s. These ancestors include Johann Philipp and Anna Catharina Finckel, who were members of the first group of Palatine Germans who settled in Germantown in the Hudson Valley in 1710. In 1981, Kopra was photographed singing on stage and playing trombone forAustin, Texaspunk funk bandBig Boys.[4]
Kopra received his commission as asecond lieutenant from the U.S. Military Academy in May 1985 and was designated as anArmy aviator in August 1986. He then completed a three-year assignment atFort Campbell,Kentucky, where he served as an aeroscout platoon leader, troop executive officer, and squadron adjutant in the101st Airborne Division's air cavalry squadron. In 1990, he was assigned to the3rd Armored Division inHanau, Germany, and was deployed to the Middle East in support ofOperations Desert Shield andDesert Storm. He completed his tour in Germany as an attack helicopter company commander and an operations officer. Kopra retired from the U.S. Army in November 2010.
Kopra was assigned to NASA at theJohnson Space Center in September 1998 as a vehicle integration test engineer. In this position, he primarily served as an engineering liaison for Space Shuttle launch operations and International Space Station hardware testing. He was actively involved in the contractor tests of the Extravehicular Activity (EVA) interfaces for each of the space station truss segments.Selected as a mission specialist by NASA in July 2000, Kopra reported for Astronaut Candidate Training the following month. He then completed the initial two years of intensive Space Shuttle and ISS training, scientific and technical briefings, andT-38 flight training. Kopra was also assigned technical duties in the Space Station Branch of the Astronaut Office, where his primary focus was the testing of crew interfaces for two future ISS modules as well as the implementation of support computers and operational Local Area Network onInternational Space Station.
In September 2006, Kopra served as anaquanaut during theNEEMO 11 mission aboard theAquariusunderwater laboratory, living and working underwater for seven days.[6]
Kopra spent a little less than 60 days as a flight engineer ofExpedition 20 on the ISS, arriving aboard the station aboard space shuttleEndeavour on theSTS-127 mission and returning to Earth aboard space shuttleDiscovery on theSTS-128 mission. He participated in the first spacewalk of the STS-127 mission.[7][8]
Kopra was assigned to fly onSTS-133, the final flight of theDiscovery. He lost that assignment when he was injured in a bicycle accident, possibly breaking his hip. He was replaced byStephen G. Bowen.[9][10]
Kopra served as commander of the ISS, withSoyuz TMA-19M, as part ofExpedition 46/47. During a spacewalk on January 15, 2016, Kopra's spacesuit began to leak water into his helmet causing the walk to be cut short. The suit he was using is the same suit that had developed a more serious water leak during a spacewalk by Italian astronautLuca Parmitano.[11] Kopra returned to Earth onSoyuz TMA-19M and landed 18 June 2016 09:15 UTC,[12] after spending 186 days in space.[13]
This article incorporatespublic domain material from websites or documents of theNational Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Media related toTimothy Kopra at Wikimedia Commons
| Preceded by | ISS Expedition Commander March 1, 2016, to June 18, 2016 | Succeeded by |
NASA Astronaut Group 17 ← NASA Astronaut Group 18 →NASA Astronaut Group 19 | |||||||
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| Mission specialists | |||||||
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