Michael López-Alegría - Spacewalking Astronaut

Michael López-Alegría, also known as “L-A,” is one of America’s most experienced astronauts. He has completed six space missions so far and commanded three of them, spending 296 days (about 9 and a half months) in space. He shares the current United States record for spacewalks with 10 total. And he isn’t finished yet.

Born in Madrid, Spain, in 1958 to an American mother and Spanish father, young Miguel Eladio López- Alegría immigrated to the United States with his family, who settled in Mission Viejo, California. After high school graduation, he entered the United States Naval Academy and earned a degree in systems engineering. Upon completing flight school and earning his wings as a naval aviator in 1981, López-Alegría became a pilot and instructor pilot with Navy squadrons stateside, in Spain, and at the Naval Air Test Center in Patuxent River, Maryland. He also earned a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and graduated from Naval Test Pilot School. He has logged more than 5,700 pilot hours in more than 30 types of aircraft.

NASA selected López-Alegría as one of nineteen members of astronaut Group 14 in 1992. He first flew as a mission specialist on the STS-73 mission (1995), the second U.S. Microgravity Laboratory Spacelab mission on Space Shuttle Columbia. He returned to space in 2000 on the STS-92 mission on Space Shuttle Discovery to deliver and install the Z-1 truss segment and a pressurized mating adapter (docking port) for the International Space Station (ISS). He became a spacewalker with two EVAs at the ISS. Two years later, he was in space again on STS-113, flying on Space Shuttle Endeavour to the space station to deliver and install another large truss segment, the spine to which the station’s solar arrays and radiators are attached. He completed three EVAs with spacewalking partner John Herrington, the first Native American in space.

Between his second and third spaceflights, “L-A” went in the opposite direction—undersea. He did a week-long simulated space mission at the Aquarius underwater research base near Key Largo in Florida. Three fellow astronauts-turned-aquanauts and a training supervisor lived in a laboratory 62 feet below the surface and went on “spacewalks” in scuba gear.  These simulations are called NEEMOs for NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations. López-Alegría was on the first of more than 20 such undersea missions for astronaut training.

On his fourth mission in space, López-Alegría was commander of ISS Expedition 14 in 2006. He spent seven months on the space station, traveling there and back on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. He completed five more EVAs, two with cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and three with astronaut Sunita Williams. He logged a cumulative time of 67 hours and 40 minutes (almost three days total) in his 10 spacewalks as a NASA astronaut.

López-Alegría is a graduate of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government Program for Senior Executives. After 20 years with NASA, he retired in 2012 and moved into industry, serving first as President of the Commercial Spaceflight Foundation and then becoming an independent consultant and member of various advisory boards. In 2017, he joined the company Axiom Space, Inc. as director of business development and astronaut. He commanded the first and third Axiom missions to the ISS on SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2022 and 2024, and he may fly in space again. Asked if he would want to go to Mars, he notes how challenging it will be but admits, “Never say never.”

López-Alegría actively posts on social media, so his observations about spaceflight are readily accessible. He is fluent in English, Spanish, French, and Russian, and he has starred in two Spanish-language documentaries about spaceflight. He is easy to find online if you want to learn more about this distinguished Hispanic American astronaut and business executive.