Astronaut Pamela
Melroy, a two-time shuttle pilot, will become the second woman to command a
NASA shuttle when she leads the upcoming STS-120 mission to the International
Space Station (ISS), the space agency said Monday.
Melroy, a
U.S. Air Force colonel hailing from Rochester, New York, will command a crew of
six astronauts charged with delivering a new connecting node to the ISS. Built
for NASA in Italy, the Node
2 module will serve as a link between other habitable space station
compartments.
Joining Melroy
on the STS-120 mission - currently the fifth shuttle flight to fly after NASA's
STS-121
spaceflight launches next month - are pilot George
Zamka, mission specialists Scott
Parazynski, Douglas Wheelock, Michael
Foreman and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency
(ESA).
Melroy is
only the second female astronaut to command a U.S. orbiter after shuttle
veteran Eileen
Collins, who led NASA's STS-114
return to flight mission in 2005 and retired in
May 2006. Collins first commanded a shuttle mission in 1999 after serving as
pilot on two previous flights.
Selected to
join NASA's astronaut corps in 1994, Melroy served as shuttle pilot aboard the
Discovery orbiter during STS-92,
an ISS construction mission that launched
on Oct. 11, 2000. She also served as pilot for the STS-112
shuttle
flight aboard Atlantis during its ISS-bound mission in 2002.
Melroy joined
the U.S. Air Force in 1983 after earning a degree in physics and astronomy from
Wellesley College. She also earned a master's degree in Earth and planetary
sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984, NASA said.
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