{"id":28310,"date":"2019-09-19T09:57:57","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T13:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/?p=28310"},"modified":"2019-10-02T15:25:27","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T19:25:27","slug":"eileen-collins-the-first-female-to-pilot-command-space-shuttle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/2019\/09\/eileen-collins-the-first-female-to-pilot-command-space-shuttle\/","title":{"rendered":"Eileen Collins the first female to pilot, command Space Shuttle"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Eileen Collins looks over a procedure handbook while sitting in the commander’s seat of the Space Shuttle. On this 1999 mission, the shuttle was deploying the Chandra X-Ray Observatory above the Earth’s atmosphere.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Eileen Collins has flown four missions on NASA\u2019s Space Shuttle, but one moment sticks out in her mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was on my very first flight in 1995, when I first saw a sunrise from space,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

At the time, she was still in astronauts\u2019 familiar orange pressure suits and concentrating on various technical tasks inside the shuttle.<\/p>\n

\u201cBusy, busy, busy,\u201d she says. \u201cThen one of the other crew says, \u2018Look out the window. Here comes your first sunrise in space.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI could see the curvature of the Earth and all these colors\u2014red, yellow, orange, blue, white. It\u2019s like looking at a rainbow.\u201d<\/p>\n

While she was too busy to think about it at the time, she later realized she had achieved her lifelong dream.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing an astronaut was something I had wanted since fourth grade and here I am. I finally made it years later.”<\/p>\n

Collins, 62, the first female pilot and first female commander of a Space Shuttle mission, will be in Chattanooga on Thursday, Sept. 19, by way of computer at UTC\u2019s Challenger STEM Learning Center. In a Skype chat from her home in San Antonio, Texas, she will be talking with a group of 65 ninth-graders from the Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy.<\/p>\n

Speaking with Collins is part of a class project that involves rocketry, says Charles Cole, high school science teacher at CGLA. Learning the basic principles of rocketry, groups of students will design and build a working rocket and eventually display and discuss them during CGLA\u2019s STEM Night.<\/p>\n

Cole says the students have researched Collins and have a list of questions for her, including:<\/p>\n