Rice alum named first woman to command space station

Rice alum named first woman to command space station

BY ARIE WILSON PASSWATERS
Rice News Staff

Alumna Peggy Whitson ’86 is no stranger to new challenges – even extraterrestrial ones.

Whitson, a veteran NASA astronaut, will return to the International Space Station (ISS) in October to become its first woman commander. She served as the station’s first science officer during her initial ISS visit in 2002.

WHITSON

“I really wanted the challenge this time around of trying to be the commander,” Whitson told the Houston Chronicle. “I would hope we attract more young women into the sciences, mathematics and engineering. I think it’s important for young women to be a key part of space exploration.”

On her first ISS mission, Whitson spent six months conducting experiments in human life sciences, microgravity sciences and on commercial products.

And of course, there was the most exciting part of her duties — the space walk.

“It was just me out there over nothing,” Whitson said. “I was about 40 feet away from the station and Earth was going below me. It was an incredible sensation of flying.”

During trips outside the station, Whitson helped install the platform for the station’s robotic arm and segments of the ISS truss that support nearly an acre of solar panels.

When she returns to space as ISS commander, Whitson will launch with cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and will be visited by a rotation of U.S. and European astronauts.

Whitson will oversee the ISS’s receipt of European and Japanese space modules and an external Canadian robotic device. Other major events during her command will include receiving the first delivery of science equipment and supplies from an unmanned cargo capsule and moving a 35,000-pound solar power module. Both tasks have never been attempted before.

An Iowa native, Whitson is a former student of Kathleen Matthews, the Stewart Memorial Professor of Biochemistry and dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences. Whitson earned her doctorate in biochemistry in 1986 and continued at Rice as a Welch Postdoctoral Fellow until she joined NASA in 1986. She was selected for astronaut training in 1996 and became an adjunct assistant professor of biochemistry and cell biology in 1997.