Col Pamela Melroy, USAF. Photo Courtesy of NASA.

NASA Names 2nd Woman Shuttle Commander

From the time she was a little girl growing up in Rochester, NY, Pamela Ann Melroy dreamed of flying to the moon like the Apollo 11 astronauts she eagerly watched on television. Today, 37 years later, she may not have walked on the moon like historic icon Neil Armstrong, but she’s making history—in space. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently named USAF Col Pamela Melroy as commander of an upcoming space shuttle mission, making her the second woman ever to command a shuttle mission. She will command the STS-120 mission that will launch an Italian-built US module for the International Space Station in 2007.

Col Melroy, who joined the NASA team in 1995, is no stranger to shuttle missions. She previously piloted missions in 2000 and 2002, each to the space station. She’s logged more than 500 hours in space and the 44-year-old’s NASA career also includes serving on the Columbia Reconstruction Team and serving as deputy project manager for a crew survival investigation team.

	Col Pamela Melroy, USAF. Photo Courtesy of NASA.

The newest shuttle commander was commissioned through the Air Force ROTC program in 1983, after graduating from Wellesley College (MA). The following year, she received a master of science degree in earth and planetary science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After completing Undergraduate Pilot Training at Reese AFB, TX, in 1985, she flew the KC-10 for six years at Barksdale AFB, LA, as a copilot, aircraft commander and instructor pilot. In addition to being a highly decorated veteran of Operations Just Cause and Desert Storm, she also served as a test pilot with the C-17 Combined Test Force, before being selected as an astronaut candidate by the US space agency. Col Melroy has logged more than 200 combat and combat-support flight hours and over 5,000 hours of flight time in some 45 different aircraft.

As Col Melroy prepares to take the helm, her predecessor makes ready for life away from NASA. Retired USAF Col Eileen Collins, the United State’s first woman shuttle commander, left the US space agency in May. She commanded the Columbia shuttle in 1999 and the “Return to Flight” shuttle mission in 2005. During one of her flights, Col Collins, a Charter Member of the Women’s Memorial, took a Memorial pin with her into space. The four-time space-flight veteran plans to enter the civilian aerospace industry.

Though hundreds of people have made the journey into space since the first manned space flight that carried Russian cosmonauts in 1961, Colonels Collins and Melroy are among an elite group of American women who have served in the US astronaut corps. As early as the 1960s, America brought women into its space program when 19 US women astronaut trainees were recruited for the First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLAT) program. Thirteen of them became FLAT finalists and were selected for future training for the planned Mercury 13 project. However, none of them saw flight duty because the project was discontinued. It would be two more decades before the United States sent its first woman into space when astrophysicist Dr. Sally Ride served as a mission specialist in 1983. Besides the pioneers from the Mercury 13 project, 16 women are among NASA’s list of former astronauts, including three who died during their missions. Today, of the 149 astronauts serving as mission specialists, pilots, commanders and management astronauts, 29 are women, according to NASA. Nine of them are military women from the Navy, Navy Reserve, Air Force and Army. To learn more about US space program and women astronauts, visit NASA on the Web at www.nasa.gov.

	Col Pamela Melroy, USAF. Photo Courtesy of NASA.

July 2006

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