Chris Ferguson is a retired NASA astronaut and former U.S. Navy captain who has had a distinguished career in space exploration. He flew on three Space Shuttle missions, including STS-115 as a pilot in 2006, and STS-126 as commander in 2008. Ferguson is most famous for commanding STS-135 in 2011, which was the final mission of NASA’s Space Shuttle program.
After retiring from NASA, Ferguson joined Boeing as the director of Crew and Mission Operations for the company’s Commercial Crew Program, working on the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. Although initially slated to command the first crewed flight of the Starliner, he stepped down in 2020 for personal reasons.
Ferguson has contributed extensively to space exploration and human spaceflight safety, often drawing parallels between historical failures in large systems and potential risks in space missions.