Joan Higginbotham

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Joan Higginbotham
Joan Higginbotham
Country: United States
Organization: NASA
selected on May 1, 1996
(16th NASA Group)
Calls: 1 space flight
Begin: December 10, 2006
Landing: December 22, 2006
Time in space: 12d 20h 45m
retired on November 2007
Space flights

Joan Elizabeth Miller Higginbotham (born Joan Elizabeth Higginbotham on August 3, 1964 in Chicago , Illinois , USA ) is a former American astronaut .

Life

Higginbotham grew up in Chicago, the third largest city in the United States. After attending elementary and secondary school, she left Chicago's Whitney M. Young Magnet High School in 1982. She then studied electrical engineering at Southern Illinois University (SIUC) in Carbondale . During the summer months she worked at IBM to make some money. She also planned to start there after college. But when Higginbotham graduated in 1987, IBM wasn't hiring new electronics workers. Instead, it was suggested that she work in the field for the company and hire her as an engineer as soon as there was a vacancy.

She wasn't very enthusiastic about it, but luckily it turned out differently: representatives of the US space agency IBM regularly visited Chicago to look for technicians. This year, of all times, nobody from NASA came by. Instead, one day she received a call from a man. He said he was from NASA and they were looking for technicians for the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida . She agreed and started her service at KSC just two weeks after her bachelor's degree .

Higginbotham first worked in the Electrical and Telecommunications Systems Division of KSC as an electrician for payloads. Half a year later, she was appointed head of experiment support for the Columbia orbiter . She was then responsible for all shuttle missions to ensure that all the technical equipment housed in the payload bay was adequately supplied with power and did not cause any short circuits. Word of their enthusiasm for work got around. And so one day the management of the KSC approached Higginbotham to ask if they would like to support the director for the operation of the space shuttles. This commissioned them with the formation of a working group to analyze the processes on the orbiters. In the next step, her team developed a display for the visitor center of the KSC, which enabled a detailed graphic representation to see in which phase of completion each shuttle is.

Higginbotham then went back to college and received a Masters in Business Management from the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) in Melbourne in 1992 . She was then appointed assistant project engineer for the Atlantis . She helped equip the orbiter with a coupling nozzle developed by Russia as part of the Shuttle Mir program . The Atlantis was the first ferry to dock with the Mir space station in the summer of 1995 ( STS-71 ) .

After two years, Higginbotham was given full technical responsibility for the Columbia. As chief engineer, she had to prepare the longest-serving orbiter in the NASA fleet for its missions. That ranged from the arrival in the assembly hall ( Orbiter Processing Facility ) to the start, where she sat in the control center. In addition, she continued her studies and graduated in mid-1996 from FIT with a master’s degree in space systems technology.

Astronaut activity

Higginbotham never intended to become an astronaut. One of her supervisors approached her and said she had what it takes and should apply. In 1994 she submitted her documents. She was also shortlisted and was invited to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Texas in June for interviews and medical and psychological evaluation. In the end it wasn't enough - it was rejected. She was upset and felt her ego hit, she says, when she explains why she reapplied the following year.

Higginbotham came with the 16th astronaut group to NASA, which with a strength of 35 candidates formed the largest group since the legendary "Thirty Five New Guys" 1978 (NASA astronaut group 8). Higginbotham was one of a total of 2,432 applicants who met the formal selection criteria. This resulted in 123 finalists who visited the JSC in Houston between October 1995 and February 1996 for the week-long tests.

In mid-August 1996, Higginbotham started the two-year basic training with the 43 other applicants - 10 pilots, 25 mission specialists and 9 international candidates. This was followed by assignments in the payload department of the astronauts office and in the so-called Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory, where new computer programs and instruments are tested before they are integrated into the shuttle. She then returned to the Kennedy Space Center as an astronaut and looked after components for the International Space Station (ISS) until they were brought into orbit on the shuttle. Before receiving her first nomination for a space flight, she was CapCom and then headed the Systems Crew Interfaces Section for the ISS.

Higginbotham was set up for her first mission in August 2002 and trained as a mission specialist on STS-117 under the direction of Mark Polansky . Because of the Columbia accident in early 2003, all other shuttle flights were suspended. Therefore the use of STS-117 planned for October 2003 was postponed. In February 2005, NASA made a small change in the crew and assigned Polansky and Higginbotham to flight STS-116 , which was operated in December 2006.

Just a month after she was selected for the STS-126 mission in October 2007 , Higginbotham left NASA in late November 2007 for a position in business.

Private

Higginbotham is divorced and childless.

See also

Web links

Commons : Joan Higginbotham  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME Higginbotham, Joan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Miller Higginbotham, Joan Elizabeth; Higginbotham, Joan Elizabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astronaut
DATE OF BIRTH 3rd August 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago , Illinois, USA