Raja Chari nominated for US Air Force Brigadier General
INDIAN-AMERICAN astronaut Raja J Chari has been nominated by President Joe Biden for the appointment to the grade of Air Force brigadier general.
The nomination was announced on Thursday (26) and will have to be confirmed by the Senate which approves all senior civilian and military appointments, according to the US Defence Department.
Air Force Colonel Chari, 45, is currently serving as the Crew-3 commander and astronaut at the NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
The Iowa native earned a master's degree in aeronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated from the US Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland.
Chari served as the commander of the 461st Flight Test Squadron and the director of the F-35 Integrated Test Force at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
He served as commander of the NASA SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station (ISS), which launched on November 10, 2021. He served on the ISS as part of Expedition 66 and 67 before returning to Earth May 6, 2022, completing the agency's third long-duration commercial crew mission.
He served as a flight engineer aboard the ISS for 177 days in orbit. During his time on the Space Station he performed two spacewalks and helped in capturing and releasing three SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and two Cygnus cargo vehicles.
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Chari was raised in Cedar Falls, Iowa. His father Srinivas Chari went to the US at a young age from Hyderabad for an engineering degree. He met his wife and spent his entire career at John Deere in Waterloo, Iowa.