Gui Haichao (; born November 1986) is a Chinese aerospace engineer, researcher and professor selected as part of the

Shenzhou program Shenzhou may refer to: * Shenzhou, or "Divine Land", one of the Chinese names of China * Shenzhou program, a crewed spaceflight initiative by the People's Republic of China * Shenzhou (spacecraft), spacecraft from China which first carried a Chi ...

. Unlike all earlier

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

s, Gui is China's first civilian astronaut who is not enlisted in the

People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps The People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps (PLAAC; ), also known as the Chinese Astronaut Corps (), is a Beijing-based deputy-corps grade People's Liberation Army Aerospace Force (PLAASF) and is responsible for the selection and training of ...

and is the first

payload specialist A payload specialist (PS) was an individual selected and trained by commercial or research organizations for flights of a specific payload on a NASA Space Shuttle mission. People assigned as payload specialists included individuals selected by t ...

on mission in

China Manned Space Program The China Manned Space Program (CMS; ), also known as Project 921 () is a space program developed by the People's Republic of China and run by the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) under the Equipment Development Department of the Central Militar ...

Early life and education

Gui Haichao was born in Baoshan,

Yunnan Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...

province, China to a family of farmers. He studied at Yaoguan Central Primary School (now the Central School of Yaoguan Town, Shidian County), Yaoguan Middle School (locally known as "Shidian No. 3 Middle School") and Shidian Middle School (Shidian No. 1 Middle School). He received the

B.E. A Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) or a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) is an undergraduate academic degree awarded to a college graduate majoring in an engineering discipline at a higher education institution. In the United Kingdom, a Bac ...

and

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

degrees in

aerospace engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is s ...

from

Beihang University Beihang University (BUAA; formerly as Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The univers ...

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

, China, in 2009 and 2014, respectively.

Academic career

From 2014 to 2017, he was successively a

postdoctoral researcher A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary acade ...

with the Department of Earth and Space Science and Engineering,

York University York University (), also known as YorkU or simply YU), is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's third-largest university, and it has approximately 53,500 students, 7,000 faculty and staff, ...

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

, and the Department of Aerospace Engineering,

Ryerson University Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU, or Toronto Met), formerly Ryerson University, is a public research university located in Toronto, Canada. The university's core campus is situated within the Garden District in downtown Toronto, although i ...

(

Toronto Metropolitan University Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU, or Toronto Met), formerly Ryerson University, is a Public university, public research university located in Toronto, Canada. The university's core campus is situated within the Garden District, Toronto, Gar ...

since 2022), Toronto. Since 2017, he has been an

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a position ...

with the School of Astronautics,

. His research interests include spacecraft dynamics, nonlinear control, and estimation theory, with an emphasis on applications to space systems.

Space career

When Gui Haichao learned in spring 2018 that the Bureau of Human Spaceflight and the Chinese Astronautics Training Center were looking for civilian payload experts in addition to fighter pilots for the use and expansion phase of the

Chinese space station Tiangong (), officially the ''Tiangong'' space station (), is a permanently crewed space station constructed by China and operated by China Manned Space Agency. Tiangong is a modular design, with modules docked together while in low Earth ...

, he got in touch immediately. From 2500 candidates accepted after reviewing the application documents, 18 astronauts were accepted after a three-stage selection process completed in September 2020, including four payload experts, one of them Gui Haichao despite his slight myopia. Of the four payload experts, Gui Haichao was the only one with a university degree. The official swearing-in ceremony for the new selection group took place on 1 October 2020, the Chinese national holiday. Gui Haichao, who had previously joined the

Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...

in July 2020, was now the first civilian taikonaut.

Shenzhou 16

Later he was appointed to be a

on Shenzhou 16 mission in June 2022, thus becoming the first Chinese civilian of Group 3 in space on 30 May 2023. He is responsible for the on-orbit operation of space science experimental payloads.

Publications (selected)

* Hybrid Global Finite-Time Dual-Quaternion Observer and Controller for Velocity-Free Spacecraft Pose Tracking zusammen mit Yong Wang und Wenjie Su, 2020 in Control Systems Technology, IEEE Transactions on PP(99): S. 1–13 doi
10.1109/TCST.2020.3030670
* Observer-Based Fault-Tolerant Spacecraft Attitude Tracking Using Sequential Lyapunov Analyses, 2020 * Dual-Quaternion-Based Spacecraft Pose Tracking with a Global Exponential Velocity Observer zusammen mit Qingqing Dang und Hao Wen, 2019, in Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics 42(9): S. 1–10 doi :10.2514/1.G00430
online
* Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Spacecraft Pose Tracking With Control Allocation zusammen mit Anton H. J. de Ruiter, 2017, in Control Systems Technology, IEEE Transactions on PP(99): S. 1–16 doi :10.1109/TCST.2017.277137
online
* FTUT Final zusammen mit George Vukovich, 201
online
* On the attitude stabilization of a rigid spacecraft using two skew control moment gyros zusammen mit Lei Jin, Shijie Xu und Jun Zhang, 2014, in Nonlinear Dynamics 79(3): pp. 2079–2097 doi : 10.1007/s11071-014-1796-
online

References

External links

Publications
by and about Gui Haichao on the

ResearchGate ResearchGate is a European commercial social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. According to a 2014 study by ''Nature'' and a 2016 article in ''Times Higher Education' ...

document server
Publications
by Gui Haichao on

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gui, Haichao 1986 births Living people Shenzhou program astronauts Beihang University alumni