Eileen Collins’ Unlikely Journey to Becoming the First Woman to Command NASA’s Space Shuttle

Eileen Collins didn’t privation to enactment her beingness connected the large screen. Standing connected the dimly lit signifier astatine the IFC Center successful Greenwich Village astatine the premiere of a feature-length documentary astir her beingness and vocation arsenic an astronaut, Collins admitted that she archetypal turned down the thought down the film. “In the end, I said yes to the documentary due to the fact that I person to archer myself, it’s not conscionable astir me,” Collins told the audience. “But I thought my story, due to the fact that of wherever I came from and that we didn’t person wealth erstwhile I was a kid…that it was important for maine not to interest astir my privateness and to get my communicative out.”

Indeed, it’s not your emblematic astronaut story. Filmmaker Hannah Berryman explains that Collins’ unsocial inheritance inspired her to archer the communicative of the archetypal American pistillate to aviator and bid NASA’s Space Shuttle successful the caller documentary Spacewoman. The movie is partially based connected Collins’ autobiography, Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars, and it details the astronaut’s travel towards making history, the perils faced on the way, and however she broke barriers successful a powerfully male-dominated field.

“When I was precise young and archetypal started speechmaking astir astronauts, determination were nary women astronauts,” Collins told Gizmodo. The erstwhile NASA astronaut grew up successful Elmira, New York with a imagination of becoming a pilot. Although wealth was tight, Collins worked respective jobs to prevention capable for flying lessons. She joined the U.S. Air Force successful 1978, conscionable 3 years aft a caller argumentation allowed women to bid arsenic pilots. Around that aforesaid time, NASA selected the archetypal people of astronauts that included women. Six retired of the 35 astronaut candidates were women, and they were preparing for the abstraction agency’s Space Shuttle program. Sally Ride became the archetypal American pistillate to spell to abstraction successful 1989 connected committee the Space Shuttle Challenger.

A twelvemonth later, Collins joined NASA and archetypal flew the Space Shuttle arsenic a aviator successful 1995. That marked the archetypal clip a pistillate had piloted the shuttle, and the ngo included the spacecraft’s archetypal attack to the Russian Space Station Mir. In 1998, Collins was named arsenic the commandant of the Space Shuttle ngo to deploy the Chandra X-Ray Observatory successful orbit, making her the archetypal pistillate to bid the reusable spacecraft.

This wasn’t an mean mission—it was NASA’s alleged “Return to Flight” ngo arsenic it took spot astir a twelvemonth aft the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, which killed each 7 astronauts connected committee the spacecraft arsenic it broke isolated during reentry done Earth’s atmosphere. “I knew that this ngo was going to beryllium my past mission, adjacent earlier we had the accident,” Collins said. “I had nary thought it would crook into what it turned into.”

Collins’ unit was 5 weeks distant from motorboat erstwhile the Columbia calamity took place. Rather than backing down from the mission, the incidental made Collins much determined to bid the shuttle for the nation’s instrumentality to space. “I walked into my grooming manager’s bureau and I said, I’m going to alert this mission, it’s going to beryllium safe…because I knew if I had conscionable quit, it would person sent the worst message,” Collins said.

The documentary delves into the astronaut’s idiosyncratic beingness and however those monumental decisions successful spaceflight past affected her household of four, peculiarly her seven-year-old girl astatine the time. The movie highlights the challenges Collins faced successful maintaining her narration with her daughter, Bridget Youngs, portion preparing for abstraction missions. It besides reflects connected Collins’ ain narration with some her parents, and the conditions of her upbringing that shaped her into the resilient pistillate she became.

Initially scheduled for liftoff successful January 1999, the Space Shuttle Discovery yet launched connected July 25, 2005 arsenic NASA spent years researching and implementing information upgrades for the spacecraft. It inactive wasn’t enough; debris struck Discovery during its motorboat and pieces of foam broke disconnected the outer vessel of the abstraction shuttle. This was the aforesaid contented that led to the tragic nonaccomplishment of Columbia, but Collins was determined that her unit would not conscionable the aforesaid fate.

The STS-114 unit members connected their mode to the motorboat pad. Credit: NASA

As Discovery approached Mir, Collins performed a 360-degree flip, exposing the spacecraft’s belly to the astronauts connected committee the abstraction presumption truthful that they could photograph its protective thermal tiles. The images were downlinked to crushed control, revealing 2 areas wherever spread fillers were protruding from the shuttle. Three spacewalks were carried retired to extract the fillers, and Discovery was cleared to instrumentality to Earth a time later. The abstraction shuttle landed connected August 20, 2005, bypassing an archetypal landing day of August 8, 2005.

The documentary showcases the exceptional accomplishment Collins needed to execute this first-of-a-kind maneuver, with power systems connected the abstraction shuttle being mostly manual astatine the time. “The Space Shuttle was designed successful the 1970s, and the pilots and commanders had to cognize each azygous circuit breaker, each switch—they had to cognize however to tally each those procedures, immoderate of them by memory,” Collins said. “It took years and years of memorization, and sometimes the incorrect power could ka-boom, truthful we had to beryllium very, precise careful.”

“With the advent of each the exertion that we person today, the caller spacecraft are afloat automatic, you tin beryllium successful the pilot’s spot and not beryllium a certified pilot,” Collins added. “So there’s bully and bad, I deliberation it’s bully that it’s overmuch safer, the automation could adjacent diagnose a occupation for you, but it’s not rather arsenic breathtaking arsenic being capable to thrust it yourself.”

It’s been astir 20 years since Collins felt the weightlessness of being successful space, a feeling she intelligibly misses arsenic she recalls flying to orbit and looking retired onto Earth’s skyline (her slightest favourite happening being that determination was nary pizza successful space). As she reflected connected her status pursuing the Discovery mission, Collins said, “It was bittersweet to leave, I’d emotion to alert to abstraction again. It’s truly amusive up there.”