Thomas Marshburn

Thomas Henry Marshburn (born August 29, 1960) is an American physician and a former NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of three spaceflights to the International Space Station and holds the record for the oldest person to perform a spacewalk at 61 years old.

Education Marshburn was born in Statesville, North Carolina, as the son of Robert Marshburn (1920–1988) and Gladys Marshburn (née Grier) (1923–2013). Marshburn graduated from Henderson High School in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1978. He obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Davidson College in North Carolina in 1982, and a Master of Science degree in engineering physics from the University of Virginia in 1984. He received a Doctor of Medicine degree from Wake Forest University in 1989, and a Master of Medical Science degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch in 1997.

In 2019, he served as a backup flight engineer for the Soyuz MS-13 and Soyuz MS-15 long-duration flights to the ISS, first backing up Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, and the American-Swedish astronaut Jessica Meir.

STS-127

Marshburn's first flight was on STS-127, which lifted off on July 15, 2009, at 6:03 p.m. EDT and landed on July 31, 2009. The mission delivered the Japanese-built Exposed Facility (JEM-EF) and the Experiment Logistics Module Exposed Section (ELM-ES) to the International Space Station. Marshburn took part in three spacewalks during the mission.

Expedition 34/35 Marshburn served as a flight engineer on Expedition 34/35 to the International Space Station, launching aboard Soyuz TMA-07M on December 19, 2012, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, along with crew members Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko. The crew was welcomed aboard the ISS by Expedition 34 commander Kevin A. Ford and cosmonauts Evgeny Tarelkin and Oleg Novitskiy. Marshburn and his crew returned to Earth on May 13, 2013. He performed his fifth EVA with fellow astronaut Kayla Barron on the exterior of the ISS shortly after the mission had begun. He took over command of the ISS from Anton Shkaplerov on March 29. After the arrival of Crew-4 and the transfer of command to Oleg Artemyev, Crew-3 landed on May 6, 2022 after 176 days in space.

Post-NASA career Thomas Marshburn in 2025 After leaving NASA, Marshburn joined Sierra Space in late 2022 as the Chief Medical Officer in the company's Human Spaceflight Center and Astronaut Training Academy.