Speaker Biography

Eileen M. Collins

Former NASA Astronaut

Eileen M. Collins is a former NASA astronaut and a retired U.S. Air Force colonel. A former military instructor and test pilot, Collins was the first woman pilot and first woman commander of a space shuttle. Collins graduated from the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California, in 1990. She was selected by NASA and became an astronaut in July 1991. After tours at Kennedy Space Center (shuttle launch and landing) and Johnson Space Center (shuttle engineer and capsule communicator), she flew the space shuttle as pilot in 1995 aboard Discovery. This mission was the first space shuttle to rendezvous with the Russian Space Station MIR. She was also the pilot for Atlantis in 1997, where her crew docked with MIR. Collins became the first woman commander of a U.S. spacecraft with shuttle mission Columbia in 1999, the deployment of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Her final space flight was as commander of Discovery in 2005, the “Return to Flight Mission” after the tragic loss of Columbia. She has logged more than 6,751 hours in 30 different types of aircraft and more than 872 hours in space as a veteran of four space flights. Collins is a member of the National Space Council User Advisory Group and is currently serving on the National Academy of Science ASEB (Aerospace Science and Engineering Board) as well as the Astronaut Memorial Foundation.