Born: November 19, 1956, Elmira, New York, U.S.
Eileen Marie Collins is an American astronaut and pilot, who in 1999 became the first woman to command a space shuttle mission. In a 1995 mission Collins had become the first female pilot of the space shuttle.
Collins was born in Elmira, New York. She graduated from Elmira Free Academy in 1974. After high school she attended Corning Community College in Corning, New York. Collins received an A.S. degree in mathematics and science in 1976 from Corning. She won a two-year scholarship to Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, where she earned a B.A. degree in mathematics and economics in 1978. While she was at Syracuse, she joined the United States Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), because she wanted to learn to fly aeroplanes.
Following college Collins entered an Air Force pilot training programme at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma. She graduated in 1979 but remained there as an instructor until 1982. She moved in 1983 to Travis Air Force Base in California, where she was an aircraft commander and instructor pilot. She flew combat missions in the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983 and received the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal for her service. Collins continued her education after entering the Air Force. In 1986, she completed her M.S. degree in operations research from Stanford University in California. She was an assistant professor of mathematics and an instructor pilot at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado from 1986 to 1989. Collins also earned an M.A. degree in space systems management from Webster University in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1989. She then went to Edwards Air Force Base in California for Air Force test pilot school. She has flown 30 types of aircraft in her flying career.
In 1990, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) selected Collins for the astronaut programme. Before her first spaceflight in 1995 and between spaceflights, Collins served in supporting roles at NASA. Collins became the first woman to pilot a space shuttle on her first spaceflight, aboard the orbiter Discovery from February 2 through February 11, 1995. She guided the shuttle to within 9 m (30 ft) of the Russian space station Mir in the first joint Russian-American spaceflight.
Collins piloted her second spaceflight on the shuttle Atlantis from May 15 through May 24, 1997. This mission was the sixth visit of the space shuttle to Mir. Atlantis which brought U.S. astronaut Mike Foale and four tons of supplies to the space station, and took U.S. astronaut Jerry Linenger back to Earth.
On March 5, 1998, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that in 1999 Collins would become the first woman to command a space shuttle mission. Collins’s mission, which lasted from July 23 through July 27, carried a large X-ray astronomy satellite called Chandra (formerly the Advanced X-Ray Astrophysics Facility, or AXAF). Chandra is the third of NASA’s Great Observatories, large satellites that carry powerful astronomical observing equipment. The other Great Observatories are the Hubble Space Telescope and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Chandra should be able to detect objects more than 100 times fainter than previous X-ray satellites could detect and help astronomers learn more about stars, galaxies and quasars.
