Chris Hadfield: astronaut and author

Chris Hadfield is a retired astronaut, former fighter pilot, engineer and now author of the high-stakes thriller, The Apollo Murders. Colonel Hadfield was the first Canadian to walk in space, and is probably the world's best-known and most beloved modern astronaut. Over the course of his career, he flew three space missions, commanded the International Space Station and has spent more than 160 days in space. Prior to that, he was a Cold War fighter pilot in the 1980s, embarking on missions to intercept Soviet bombers in North American airspace. On top of his aeronautical career, Chris Hadfield is also a real life star man. In 2013, he recorded David Bowie's Space Oddity on the International Space Station, a video with more than 50 millions views, and the first ever music video performed in space. His TED Talk on fear has been watched 11 million times. Since retirement, he has published his first work of fiction, The Apollo Murders, a thriller plunging readers into the paranoia of the Cold War, through the lens of competing space programmes. The novel is set in an alternate history, where Apollo 18 - a real mission cancelled during the Nixon administration - actually went ahead as a spy mission.