Eileen Collins
- STS -63 (1995)
- STS -84 (1997)
- STS -93 ( 1999)
- STS- 114 (2005)
Eileen Marie Collins ( born November 19, 1956 in Elmira, New York, USA) is a former American astronaut.
Biography
Collins is the second of four children - two boys and two girls - of Rose and James Collins who were engaged in Elmira in an alternative housing project that was partly financed by state resources.
While the children to primary school (St. Patrick's Catholic School) visited her mother worked during the day at the local juvenile detention center. Money was tight, and so Collins had to change the high school. From the private Catholic Notre Dame High School, she went after two years on the public Elmira Free Academy. Right after graduating from high school in 1974 Collins took her studies at Corning Community College in Corning (New York ), which is only a few miles from Elmira. With government grants and loans, the mother funded the study of their daughter. After graduating in mathematics and science in 1976 Collins joined the U.S. Air Force (it was the first year that women were accepted as pilots ). This granted her a scholarship, with whom she at the private Syracuse University in Syracuse (New York) enrolled. Collins studied mathematics and economics, graduating in 1978 with a Bachelor and then took their service to the Air Force.
Collins made first in Oklahoma on the Vance Air Force Base their military pilot's license. She was there a male of only four women among 320 student pilots. There followed three years there as an instructor at T-38 training aircraft. In 1983 she was transferred to California, where she commanded C-141 Starlifter at Travis Air Force Base, long-distance transport planes and offered training courses. There she met her husband Patrick know who was on the Air Force Base Travis also worked as an instructor. 1987 both were married in Colorado on the campus of the United States Air Force Academy ( USAFA ).
As was killed in October 1983 in a military coup on the Caribbean island of Grenada Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, U.S. forces and six of Caribbean States landed a few days later on the island in order to curb the influence of Cuba. Collins was in the "Operation Urgent Fury" use mentioned here, brought their C-141 students and their families out of the country, and was awarded a distinction. In 1985, she then took the Air Force Institute of Technology, which is housed at Wright - Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, her studies again, but soon returned to the West Coast and made 1986 her Masters in Labour Research on the California Stanford University. At the time, Collins had first advertised at NASA as an astronaut. When her request was denied, she went to the USAFA in Colorado Springs (Colorado). There she took for three years to a position as assistant professor of mathematics and was also an instructor at the training aircraft T -41 Mescalero. In the meantime, she had even further down the school and 1989 made at the Catholic Webster University in St. Louis (Missouri ) Master of Space Management. Then you gave up her teaching career and trained from July, 1989 to the United States Air Force Test Pilot School (TPS ) at Edwards Air Force Base in California to test pilot. She got her degree a year later, in July 1990, top of her class, as she already had her training contract as an astronaut in your pocket.
NASA activities
Since Collins watched as a child during the summer months at nearby Harris Hill, the glider, her desire for flying was piqued. She had to earn money themselves for the expensive flight hours. And so she was already an adult when she needed the money as a waitress in a pizzeria had together in 1977 by nocturnal jobbing to learn to fly - in the morning she studied at the Corning Community College and in the afternoon we went to the airfield.
Always more flying challenges seeking Collins in 1986 for the first time submitted their applications at NASA as a shuttle pilot one. In the second trial she managed the leap into the astronaut cadre, and it was the middle of January 1990 presented with the 13th group. She was the only woman among the seven pilot candidates. In fact, she was the first shuttle pilot who NASA has selected. ( Since 1978, the astronaut corps is mixed, yet women were only accepted as mission specialists ).
The one-year basic training course was completed in July 1991 and Collins first worked in the Department of Space Shuttle engineering at the Johnson Space Center. Then she supported the shuttle crews during the preparations for the start.
In September 1993, she was prepared for her first space flight. She was the first woman in the pilot's seat of a Space Shuttle, as with STS -63 began a new chapter in the American- Russian cooperation in space. The Discovery headed in February 1995 as the first space shuttle to the space station Mir. Collins and her Commander Jim Wetherbee navigated the orbiter on the fourth day of flying up to eleven meters to the station approach and held that position for ten minutes. ( The first Briton on a walk ) When Bernard Harris ( first African American with a EVA ) and Mike Foale for four and a half hours in the payload bay worked, coordinated Collins EVA from the cockpit: In the course took two crew members a spacewalk (EVA).
Interrupted by a maternity leave, Collins then worked in mission control in Houston until their next nomination Association spokeswoman ( CapCom ).
Mid- July 1996 Eileen Collins was appointed as pilot for STS -84. It was the sixth coupling mission as part of the Shuttle -Mir program. The Atlantis broke on May 15, 1997 to the Mir station. After docking several tons were brought to equipment and experiments in the Russian space station. In addition, a crew change was made. Astronaut Jerry Linenger was replaced after four months and returned with the shuttle to Earth. His place was taken by Mike Foale. After nine days of the mission STS -84 was on 24 May to the end.
As of August 1997, he became Collins for half a year, the Department of spacecraft systems of the Astronaut Office.
As Eileen Collins was transferred to her first command in March 1998, it was a media event. Hillary Clinton, wife of the U.S. president, said at the White House reporters that Collins will lead the mission STS -93. Main task of the conducted in July 1999 the company, exposing the X-ray telescope, AXAF ( Advanced X -ray Astrophysics Facility), which is already before the start was named Chandra, in honor of the physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, in 1983 received for his theory of stellar evolution the Nobel Prize in Physics was had.
Collins was then commander of the space shuttle flight STS -114, the first flight after the Columbia disaster. As Collins was selected in August 2001 for this mission, the launch was scheduled for November 2002. At that time, no one suspected that this flight should mean the resumption of shuttle flight operation. The missionary mandate had been modified during training, the core crew remains unchanged. Originally STS -114 was planned as a pure logistics flight, the ISS Expedition 7 to the International Space Station (ISS) and the sixth crew was to bring back to Earth. As STS -114 on 26 July 2005 set off to the ISS, the crew changes had been deleted from the flight plan and the test carried out in the past two and a half years, changes to the shuttle system in mind.
According to the NASA
On May 1, 2006, NASA announced that Collins leaving the space agency. The astronaut would continue to " pursue private interests and spend more time with her family ."
On 24 February 2009, the IT company GB Tech announced that Eileen Collins would be set as a program manager. You will lead a team whose job it is to the ITAMs job of NASA ( ITAMs: Information Technology and Multimedia Services) for GB Tech to win and implement.
On April 20, 2013 Collins was admitted as an official member of the Astronaut Hall of Fame.
Private
Collins and her husband have a daughter and a son.