[1] Lu became a specialist in solar physics and did postdoctoral work at the Institute for Astronomy in Honolulu, Hawaii before being selected for the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1994.

Having been flight engineer on Soyuz TMA-2, Lu spent six months in space in 2003 as part of ISS Expedition 7, with cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.

[8][9] 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.

[11] While still employed at NASA, Lu co-founded the B612 Foundation along with former astronaut Rusty Schweickart and scientists Clark Chapman and Piet Hut.

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.

[1] While on the ISS, Lu teamed up with magician James Randi (founder of JREF) to perform a card trick in outer space.

The two cards complete with autographs are framed for public view at the JREF offices in Fort Lauderdale, FL.

Their non-profit B612 Foundation will launch an infrared space telescope in orbit around the Sun, where from a distance as great as 270,000,000 kilometers (170,000,000 mi) from Earth, where it would detect and track asteroids and other near-Earth objects posing threats to the planet.