Eileen CollinsBorn 19 Nov 1956.Eileen Marie Collins is an American astronaut who was the first woman to pilot and, later, to command a U.S. space shuttle. After college she joined the Air Force, trained as a pilot to fly many different kinds of planes and eventually became an instructor pilot. She was selected in 1990 for the astronaut program while attending the Air Force Test Pilot School. Collins served as the first woman shuttle pilot on STS-63 (Feb 3-11, 1995). which included a rendezvous with the Russian Space Station Mir, and also STS-84 (May 15-24, 1997). On her third space shuttle flight, STS-93 (Jul 22-27, 1999), which deployed the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, she became the first woman space shuttle commander. Overall she has logged over 537 hours in space. |
