Stephanie Wilson, Soaring in Discovery
Massachusetts native and Harvard graduate Stephanie Wilson, is the second African-American female astronaut ever to fly in space, following only Dr. Mae Jemison, an astronaut who made the journey in 1992.
Wilson is one of six American astronauts onboard the successful Space Shuttle Discovery's mission to the International Space Station, designated STS-121. It is her first space flight. Throughout the mission, she will operate the shuttle's and station's robotic arms to support assembly tasks and spacewalks. Having successfully launched on July 4th, Discovery will continue the evaluation of flight safety procedures, including shuttle inspection and repair techniques.
Born in Boston, Wilson graduated from Taconic High School in Pittsfield, Mass. in 1984. She then went on to earn a bachelor's degree in engineering science from Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. in 1988, and then received a master's in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas in Austin in 1992. She began her NASA career at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif., working with the team operating the Galileo spacecraft, which explored Jupiter. She was selected as an astronaut in 1996.
Wilson is flying with Commander Steve Lindsey, pilot Mark Kelly and mission specialists Piers Sellers, Mike Fossum and Lisa Nowak. European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter is also part of the crew and will remain on the station for several months.
Wilson has been an avid stamp collector since the age of eight; and enjoys skiing, travel, and music. And just in case she needed some good luck, she brought a few personal items onboard for her space flight, including a bible and items from the University of Texas.
Even though Wilson became qualified to be an astronaut in 1996, it was only after several years of hard work as an aeronautics engineer for the former Martin Marietta astronautics group, on the Titan 4 launch vehicle conducting dynamics analysis. Wilson also worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in the attitude and articulation control group for the Galileo spacecraft, whose prime mission was to study Jupiter. For Wilson, working at Johnson Space Center as an astronaut seems to be a natural progression from working on the dynamic response of launch vehicles, to controlling and testing robotic spacecraft, to now having her day in the sun-- or in this case, in space-- her first opportunity to fly on the Shuttle.
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