and the first British citizen to perform a space walk. A veteran of six space missions, he holds the cumulative-time-in-space record for a UK citizen. In 1995 he flew on the space shuttle Discovery mission that made the first rendezvous with the Russian space station Mir, and in 1997 he spent 134 days on Mir, helping to carry out repairs and maintenance to the mechanical systems after a Progress resupply vessel struck it. In December 1999 he served on the Discovery mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. He was a commander of Expedition 8 to the International Space Station, being launched on Soyuz TMA-3 on 18 October 2003 for a six-month stay. Foale joined NASA in 1983 as a payload officer at the Johnson Space Center and was selected as an astronaut in 1987 He retired from NASA in August 2013.