Edward Tsang "Ed" Lu (; born July 1, 1963) is an American

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

and former

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...

. He flew on three

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable launch system, reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. ...

flights, and made an extended stay aboard the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

. In 2007, Lu retired from NASA to become the

program manager Program Manager is the shell of Windows 3.x and Windows NT 3.x operating systems. This shell exposed a task-oriented graphical user interface (GUI), consisting of ''icons'' ( shortcuts for programs) arranged into ''program groups''. It replaced ...

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

's Advanced Projects Team. In 2002, while still at NASA, Lu co-founded the B612 Foundation, dedicated to protecting the Earth from asteroid strikes, later serving as its

chairman The chair, also chairman, chairwoman, or chairperson, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the gro ...

. As of 2020, he is its executive director.

Early life and education

Lu was born in

Springfield, Massachusetts Springfield is the most populous city in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States, and its county seat. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers: the western Westfield River, the ea ...

, to a

Taiwanese American Taiwanese Americans (traditional Chinese, Chinese: 臺灣裔美國人; pinyin: ''Táiwān yì měiguó rén''; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: ''Tâi-Bí-jîn'') are Americans of Taiwanese people, Taiwanese ancestry, including American-born descendants of migrant ...

family. His parents were immigrants from

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

. He was raised in

Honolulu, Hawaii Honolulu ( ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the county seat of the Consolidated city-county, consolidated City and County of Honol ...

, and Webster, New York. Lu attended R. L. Thomas High School, where he was a member of the wrestling team and graduated in 1980. After high school, Lu graduated from

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

, where he earned his

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

(B.S.) in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and was a member of

Pi Kappa Phi Pi Kappa Phi (), commonly known as Pi Kapp(s), is an American Greek Letter secret and social Fraternities and sororities in North America, fraternity. It was founded by Andrew Alexander Kroeg Jr., Lawrence Harry Mixson, and Simon Fogarty Jr. on De ...

. He then earned a

Master of Science A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medici ...

(M.S.) and a Ph.D. in

applied physics Applied physics is the application of physics to solve scientific or engineering problems. It is usually considered a bridge or a connection between physics and engineering. "Applied" is distinguished from "pure" by a subtle combination of fac ...

from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 1989 as a fellow of the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

. Lu became a specialist in

solar physics Solar physics is the branch of astrophysics that specializes in the study of the Sun. It intersects with many disciplines of pure physics and astrophysics. Because the Sun is uniquely situated for close-range observing (other stars cannot be re ...

and did postdoctoral work at the Institute for Astronomy in

before being selected for the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1994.

NASA career

Lu flew on

missions STS-84 in 1997 and STS-106 in 2000, in which he carried out a six-hour spacewalk to perform construction work on the International Space Station. Having been flight engineer on

Soyuz TMA-2 Soyuz TMA-2 was a Soyuz spacecraft, Soyuz (Russian Союз ТМА-2, ''Union TMA-2'') mission to the International Space Station (ISS) launched by a Soyuz FG launch vehicle. The spacecraft docked with the ISS on April 28, 2003 and undocked on ...

, Lu spent six months in space in 2003 as part of ISS Expedition 7, with cosmonaut

Yuri Malenchenko Yuri Ivanovich Malenchenko (; born December 22, 1961) is a retired Russian cosmonaut. Malenchenko became the first person to marry in space, on 10 August 2003, when he married Ekaterina Dmitrieva, who was in Texas, while he was over New Zealan ...

. In July 2003, Lu and Malenchenko answered questions from students participating in Japan's

NASDA The , or NASDA, was a Japanese national space agency established on October 1, 1969 under the National Space Development Agency Law only for peaceful purposes. Based on the Space Development Program enacted by the Minister of Education, Culture ...

special educational event, where Ed Lu performed " Happy Birthday" on an electronic piano for a student's birthday in the live broadcast from space. He had demonstrated the difficulty of playing the piano instrument in space during a live in-orbit interview with CBS News and NASA TV video feed. Also on this ISS mission on 15 October 2003, Lu communicated with the crewman of China's first crewed mission into space,

Yang Liwei Yang Liwei (; born 21 June 1965) is a Chinese major general, former military pilot, and former taikonaut of the People's Liberation Army. In October 2003, Yang became the first person sent into space by the Chinese space program. This missi ...

, flying aboard

Shenzhou 5 Shenzhou 5 (, see ) was the first human spaceflight mission of the Chinese space program, launched on 15 October 2003. The Shenzhou (spacecraft), Shenzhou spacecraft was launched on a Long March 2F launch vehicle. There had been four previous fl ...

. Lu congratulated the Chinese for the achievement and said in '' Putonghua'': "Welcome to space. Have a safe journey". Malenchenko added: "I love to have somebody else in space instead of (just) me and Ed". During the STS-106 mission, while on a space phone call with professo
Lloyd Kaufman
Ed Lu observed that there is no moon illusion in space While still employed at NASA, Lu co-founded the B612 Foundation along with former astronaut

Rusty Schweickart Russell Louis "Rusty" Schweickart (also Schweikart; born October 25, 1935) is an American aeronautical engineer, and a former NASA astronaut, research scientist, United States Air Force, U.S. Air Force fighter aircraft, fighter pilot, as well as ...

and scientists Clark Chapman and Piet Hut. It has conducted two lines of related research to help detect asteroids that could one day strike the Earth, and find the technological means for asteroid deflection. The foundation's current goal is to design and build a privately financed asteroid-finding space telescope, Sentinel, to be launched in 2017–2018. The Sentinel's infrared telescope, once parked in an orbit similar to that of Venus, will help identify asteroids and other near-Earth objects (NEOs) that pose a risk of collision with Earth.

Magic trick in space

While on the ISS, Lu teamed up with magician

James Randi James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928 – October 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American stage magician, author, and scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.#Rodrigues, Rodrig ...

(founder of JREF) to perform a card trick in outer space. Randi asked Lu to (without looking) select a card from the middle of a brand new freshly shuffled deck of cards, turn it around and reinsert the card into the deck the opposite direction. Then place the deck of cards back into its box then take them out again and fan the cards to the camera. This same procedure was being done by Randi back on Earth at the JREF headquarters in front of witnesses from the Miami Herald. Both Randi and Lu successfully selected the same card, the seven of diamonds. The remaining cards were jettisoned for weight reasons before returning to Earth, but Lu smuggled the card home. The two cards complete with autographs are framed for public view at the JREF offices in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Randi asks Lu "What are the odds that we would both choose the same card?" Lu answers "Knowing you and your tricky ways, the odds were one in one, because it's a trick!"

Post-NASA career

On August 10, 2007, Lu announced he was retiring from NASA to work at

. In June 2010, Lu left Google and worked out of the Sunfire Offices. In September 2011, Lu joined Liquid Robotics as Chief of Innovative Applications, where his work includes outreach to promote new applications for ocean science, and in 2012, he joined Hover Inc. as its Chief Technology Officer. On June 28, 2012, Lu, with Apollo 9 Astronaut

and G. Scott Hubbard, Astronautics professor at

announced plans to build and operate the first privately-funded deep space mission called

Sentinel Sentinel may refer to: Places Mountains * Mount Sentinel, a mountain next to the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana * Sentinel Buttress, a volcanic crag on James Ross Island, Antarctica * Sentinel Dome, a naturally occurring granit ...

. Their non-profit B612 Foundation will launch an

infrared Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...

space telescope A space telescope (also known as space observatory) is a telescope in outer space used to observe astronomical objects. Suggested by Lyman Spitzer in 1946, the first operational telescopes were the American Orbiting Astronomical Observatory, OAO ...

in orbit around the Sun, where from a distance as great as from Earth, where it would detect and track asteroids and other

near-Earth object A near-Earth object (NEO) is any small Solar System body orbiting the Sun whose closest approach to the Sun ( perihelion) is less than 1.3 times the Earth–Sun distance (astronomical unit, AU). This definition applies to the object's orbit a ...

s posing threats to the planet. On October 25, 2016 B612 and Lu endorsed NASA's NEOcam proposed mission and ended the Sentinel project. As of 2022, Lu is working on a new project to find "killer asteroids" by analyzing terabytes of archived data. So far, the B612 Foundation, cofounded by Lu, has found over 100 new potentially-threatening asteroids. This immense number-crunching effort is supported in part by Google's applied artificial intelligence project."Killer Asteroids Are Hiding in Plain Sight."
article by Kenneth Chang, New York Times, May 31, 2022

Personal life

Lu is married and has two children. File:Ed Lu.jpg, co-founder of the B612 Foundation (18 July 2014) File:2013 Senate testimony Ed Lu.webm, Assessing the Risks, Impacts and Solutions for Space Threats, Senate Subcommittee on Science and Space testimony on March 23, 2013 File:20070821 Ed Lu giving interview for HTV.jpg, Ed Lu giving interview for Croatian Television during Dalmatian Space Summer (21 August 2007) File:Soyuz TMA-2 after landing.jpg, Landing in Kazakhstan (October 27, 2003) File:Haircut in space.jpg, Haircut in space (12 August 2003)

References

External links

* (archived copy available a
Archive.org

written from during Expedition 7

Asteroid Apocalypse: The Tech Exists to Deflect Asteroids, So Why Aren't We Using It?
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lu, Edward Tsang 1963 births Scientists from Springfield, Massachusetts American astronauts 21st-century American physicists Cornell University College of Engineering alumni Living people Stanford University alumni Crew members of the International Space Station Google employees People from Webster, New York Articles containing video clips American academics of Chinese descent Scientists from New York (state) Space Shuttle program astronauts Spacewalkers Mir crew members Chinese astronauts American academics of Taiwanese descent American people of Taiwanese descent