Satellite Sisters

A You're The Best Encore Interview from the satellite Sisters Archives. This week, we talk to Commander Eileen Collins.  When the space shuttle Columbia blasted off on July 23, 1999, pilot Eileen Collins became NASA's first female shuttle commander. Synopsis In 1990, Eileen Collins was only the second woman to graduate as a test pilot and be selected as a NASA astronaut. She became the first woman to pilot a space shuttle mission during the Discovery's rendezvous with the Mir space station in 1995. By 1999, she had logged 419 hours in space and was given command of the space shuttle Columbia, another first for a woman. Early Life and Education Like Amelia Earhart, Valentina Tereshkova (a Soviet cosmonaut and the first woman in space, in 1963), and Sally Ride (the first American woman in space, in 1983), Collins has become a pioneer in the world of aviation, as the first woman to command a space shuttle mission. From the time she was very young, Eileen Marie Collins wanted to be a pilot. She earned an associat