Few missions waited as long from inception to orbital insertion as the first Spacelab Life Sciences (SLS-1). Payload specialist candidates for this dedicated medical research flight—cardiologist Drew Gaffney of the University of Texas Health Science Center in Dallas, biochemist Millie Hughes-Fulford of the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco, physiologist and veterinarian Bob Phillips of Colorado State University and NASA biophysicist Bill Williams—were announced in January 1984, targeting launch aboard Columbia on STS-61D in January 1986, under the mission designator of ‘Spacelab-4’. But for physician Rhea Seddon, one of the first women selected into NASA’s astronaut corps in January 1978, the wait had been even longer. She entered the space agency, keen to be useful in the life sciences arena, but by early 1984 had been assigned to a relatively ‘vanilla’ Shuttle mission to deploy a pair of communications satellites. With Spacelab-4 also on the horizon and piquing her interest, Seddon doubted that she could train for both missions in such rapid succession. One evening at an astronaut office happy hour, she got chatting to George Abbey, JSC’s director of flight crew operations. She told him that she had long been interested in Spacelab-4 but was already on another flight.
The human factor
Springer Praxis Books(formerly: Springer-Praxis Series)
2024-04-25
47 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
Online Contents | 1993
NTRS | 1985
Online Contents | 1996
British Library Online Contents | 1996
Online Contents | 1996