Eileen Collins

The first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle and the first to command a Space Shuttle mission, Collins served as a NASA astronaut and Air Force colonel across a distinguished career in military aviation and spaceflight.

Commissioned through Syracuse University's ROTC program, Collins earned pilot wings and went on to serve as a T-38 Talon instructor pilot at Vance Air Force Base before transitioning to the C-141 Starlifter. She later joined the faculty of the U.S. Air Force Academy as an assistant professor of mathematics and T-41 instructor pilot, and became the second woman pilot to attend the USAF Test Pilot School. Selected for NASA Astronaut Group 13 in 1990, she piloted STS-63 in 1995, a mission that included a space rendezvous between Discovery and the Russian station Mir, and later piloted STS-84 in 1997.

Collins commanded STS-93 in 1999, which deployed the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, making her the first woman to command a U.S. spacecraft. She commanded STS-114 in 2005, NASA's return-to-flight mission following the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, designed to test safety improvements and resupply the International Space Station. During that mission she became the first astronaut to fly the orbiter through a complete 360-degree pitch maneuver, allowing station crew members to photograph the shuttle's underside for signs of debris damage. She retired from the Air Force in January 2005 and from NASA in May 2006.