Joan Higginbotham
- STS- 116 (2006)
Joan Elizabeth Miller Higginbotham ( born August 3, 1964 as Joan Elizabeth Higginbotham in Chicago, Illinois, USA) is a former American astronaut.
Higginbotham grew up in Chicago, the third largest city in the United States. After primary and secondary school visit, she went in 1982 by the Chicago Whitney M. Young Magnet High School. She then studied at Southern Illinois University ( SIUC ) in Carbondale electrical engineering. During the summer months she worked at IBM, to earn some money. She had also to begin after university there. But when Higginbotham 1987 graduated, IBM introduced any new staff on a range of electronics. Instead, they suggested to her to work for the company in the field and to employ them as an engineer, as soon as a job would be free.
She was not very enthusiastic about it, but to their luck came it different: Regular visits by representatives of the U.S. space agency IBM Chicago to look technician for themselves. Ironically, this year no one came over from NASA. Instead, she received a call one day from a man. He said he was from NASA and they were looking for technicians for the Kennedy Space Center (KSC ) in Florida. They said yes and only occurred two weeks after their bachelor's exam their service at KSC on.
First Higginbotham worked in the Electrical and Telecommunications Systems Division of the KSC as an electrician for payloads. Six months later, her management of the experiment care for the orbiter Columbia was transferred. She was responsible then for all shuttle missions that all housed in the payload bay equipment was adequately supplied with electricity and did not cause short circuits. Your work ethic got around. And so one day approached the management of the KSC to Higginbotham, to ask her if she wanted to be the director for the operation of the space shuttles supportive to the side. This they responsible for the formation of a working group to analyze the processes at the orbiters. In the next step, her team developed a display for the visitor center of the KSC, which allowed a detailed graphical representation, in order to recognize what stage of completion, each shuttle is.
Higginbotham then again began to study and received in 1992 from the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) in Melbourne a master's in business management. She was then appointed as Deputy Project Engineer for the Atlantis. She helped to equip the orbiter as part of the Shuttle -Mir program with a process developed by Russia saver. So could (STS -71) dock with the Mir space station, the Atlantis was the first ferry in the summer of 1995.
After two years Higginbotham was given the overall technical responsibility for the Columbia. As Chief Engineer they had to prepare the longest-serving orbiter of NASA's fleet on his missions. They ranged from arrival at the assembly hall ( Orbiter Processing Facility ) to the start, where they sat in the Control Panel. In addition, she has studied and completed in mid-1996 the FIT with a master's degree in space systems from.
Astronauts activity
Higginbotham had never intended to be an astronaut. One of her supervisor approached her and said that she had what it takes and should apply. In 1994, she submitted her documents. She was also shortlisted and was invited in June to Texas to Johnson Space Center (JSC ) to guide interviews and to be medically and psychologically tested. In the end it was not enough - it was rejected. She was shocked and felt their ego hit, she says, when she explains why she applied the same again the following year.
Higginbotham came with the 16th astronaut group to NASA, the largest group in 1978 ( NASA astronaut group 8) was formed with a thickness of 35 candidates for the legendary " Thirty Five New Guys". Higginbotham was one of the total of 2,432 candidates who met the formal selection criteria. It emerged 123 finalists, 1996, the JSC in Houston visited between October 1995 and February for the week-long tests.
Mid- August 1996 began Higginbotham along with the 43 other candidates - 10 pilots, 25 mission specialists and 9 international candidates - the two-year basic training. She then served in the payload bay of the Astronaut Office and the so-called shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory, where new computer programs and instruments are tested before they are integrated into the Shuttle. Then she came back as an astronaut to the Kennedy Space Center and supervised components for the International Space Station (ISS ) until they were brought into orbit by shuttle. Before she received her first nomination for a space flight, she was CapCom and then stood in front of the Systems Department Interfaces Section for the ISS.
Higginbotham was set up in August 2002 for their first mission as a mission specialist and trained on STS -117, conducted by Mark Polansky. Because of the Columbia disaster in early 2003 all further shuttle flights were suspended. Therefore, the planned for October 2003 using STS -117 has been moved. In February 2005, NASA made a small change in the team and told Polansky and Higginbotham -flight STS- 116, which was conducted in December 2006.
Just a month after she was selected in October 2007 for the STS-126 mission, Higginbotham left end of November 2007, the NASA to accept a position in the economy.
Private
Higginbotham is divorced and childless.