A former Montrealer is set to blast off in the Discovery space shuttle in May, headed for a six-month stay among the stars at the International Space Station.

In a telephone interview, Gregory Chamitoff, right, made it clear that he could barely wait to finally get into space.

“It is very exciting,” he said.

Chamitoff was born in Montreal and lived in Chomedey until age 10, when he and his family – mother Shari, brother Ken, and late father Ashley – moved to California.

Although he no longer holds Canadian citizenship, Chamitoff, 45, has maintained ties with extended family in the Montreal area and pays occasional visits to the city, the most recent being this winter to attend a bar mitzvah.

At that event, Chamitoff reconnected with a Montreal first cousin, Stuart Feldman, who had a career as a magician.

“We used to hang around together,” Feldman recalled. “I think it’s just amazing what Gregory has done.”

Chamitoff’s extensive background in science and at NASA has made him an ideal candidate to don astronaut garb.

The NASA biographical sheet notes that, among other accomplishments, he was around 30 when he earned his PhD in aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Picked by NASA for the “Astronaut Class of 1998,” Chamitoff qualified in 2000 for flight assignment as a mission specialist and has since worked in the space station robotics branch, been the lead CAPCOM (capsule communicator) for the space station’s Expedition 9 mission in 2004, and served as crew support astronaut for Expedition 6 in 2002-2003.

For the upcoming mission, officially known as STS-124 –its target take-off date is May 25 – Chamitoff will head up to the space station aboard Discovery as flight engineer and science officer.

Also on board will be the Kibo Pressurized Module (PM), part of a larger Japanese experiment module, the largest module to be placed at the international side of the space station. The module will comprise an entire wing. It is so large that it is being sent up in stages.

Is is also this module, Chamitoff said, that will be the source of most of his work. He will spend the six months conducting a series of experiments and ensuring that the module is installed and activated properly.

Upon his arrival at the space station, Chamitoff noted, he will trade places, as it happens, with another Jewish astronaut, Garrett Reisman, also a flight engineer.

“I think that will be the first time there are two Jewish astronauts in space at the same time,” Chamitoff said with a laugh.

In fact, Chamitoff, who is slated to return to Earth on STS-126, admits to a certain kinship with other Jewish astronauts who have flown on shuttle missions before him, including Jeffrey Hoffman, who took a “space Torah” along on a shuttle mission, David Wolf, who spent four months at the Mir space station, and Scott Horowitz.

Earlier, Chamitoff worked and became friends with Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon when he trained during the late 1990s at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston.

Ramon died a national hero in 2003 when the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed while re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

“He was a wonderful guy,” Chaminoff said.