Dr. Hoffman is a professor in MIT’s Aeronautics and Astronautics Department. He received a BA in astronomy from Amherst College, a PhD in astrophysics from Harvard University, and an MSc in materials science from Rice University. As a NASA astronaut, he made five spaceflights, becoming the first astronaut to log one thousand hours of flight time aboard the space shuttle. Dr. Hoffman has performed four spacewalks, including the first unplanned contingency spacewalk in NASA’s history and the initial repair-rescue mission for the Hubble Space Telescope. Following his astronaut career, Dr. Hoffman spent four years as NASA’s European representative, working at the US Embassy in Paris. In August 2001, Dr. Hoffman joined the MIT faculty, where he teaches courses on space operations and space systems design. His primary research interests are in improving the technology of space suits and designing innovative space systems for human and robotic space exploration. He is director of the Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium, responsible for space-related educational activities. He is deputy principal investigator of the MOXIE experiment on NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, which for the first time has produced oxygen from extraterrestrial material, a critical step in the future of human space exploration. In 2007, Dr. Hoffman was inducted into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame.