Franklin Chang Díaz
Franklin Ramón Chang Díaz (born April 5, 1950) is a Costa Rican-American mechanical engineer, physicist and former NASA astronaut. He became an American citizen in 1977. He is of Chinese (paternal grandfather) and Costa Rican Spanish (maternal side) descent.
Chang Díaz is currently president and CEO of Ad Astra Rocket Company.
He is a veteran of seven Space Shuttle missions, making him the record holder as of 2014 for the most spaceflights (a record he shares with Jerry L. Ross). He was the third Latin American to go into space. Chang Díaz is a member of the NASA Astronaut Hall of Fame.
Family and education
Franklin Ramón Chang Díaz was born in San José, Costa Rica on April 5, 1950 to a father of Chinese descent, Ramón Ángel Chang Morales
(born 1919), an oil worker whose own father fled China during the Boxer Rebellion. His mother is Costa Rican, María Eugenia Díaz Romero (born 1927). One of six children, he has a younger sister, Sonia Rosa (born December 1952), and his mother, brothers, and sisters live in Costa Rica. His elder daughters are Jean Elizabeth (born December 1973), and Sonia Rosa (born March 1978) who is a member of the Massachusetts Senate. He married Peggy Marguerite Doncaster in the United States on 17 December 1984 and his younger daughters are Lidia Aurora (born March 1988) and Miranda Karina (July 1995), both born in Houston, Texas.
