Peggy Whitson

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Peggy Whitson
Peggy Whitson
Country: United States
Organization: NASA
selected on May 1, 1996
(16th NASA Group)
Calls: 3 space flights
Start of the
first space flight: 		June 5, 2002
Landing of the
last space flight: 		3rd September 2017
Time in space: 665d 22h 22min
EVA inserts: 10
EVA total duration: 60h 21min
retired on June 15, 2018
Space flights

Peggy Annette Whitson (born February 9, 1960 in Mount Ayr , Iowa , USA ) is a former American astronaut . With a total of 665 days, she holds the record as an American and as the woman with the longest total length of stay in space. With a total of 60 hours and 21 minutes, she also holds the record for the longest total time a woman was outside a spacecraft. She also holds the record for the most spacecraft missions by a woman, with a total of 10 missions.

education

Born in the small village of Mount Ayr, Whitson grew up in Beaconsfield , where her parents ran a farm. In 1978 Whitson graduated from high school and began studying chemistry and biology. She attended the private Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant , which is run by the Methodists and where the astrophysicist James Van Allen studied. In 1981 she received her bachelor's degree with “excellent” ( summa cum laude ) .

Whitson then moved to Houston ( Texas ) - a change from the countryside to the big city, which they called " culture shock designated". At the local Rice University , she worked on her doctoral thesis in biochemistry . After her doctorate in 1985 on the protein building blocks of deoxyribonucleic acid , she wanted to take up a position at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) . To do this, she put herself under time pressure for her dissertation, because she wanted to be able to state in her application that she was “ Dr. " be.

In October 1986 Whitson moved to the JSC as a research assistant. First, she worked for the National Research Council of the USA ( National Research Council ), after she led a research group of KRUG International, a company that acts on behalf of NASA, the medical department of the JSC. Since autumn 1989 she worked directly for the JSC. She was the technical director of the biochemical laboratory when she developed an experiment for the Japanese Spacelab mission STS-47 : It flew for eight days in September 1992 and studied bone growth . She was then appointed as a project scientist for the Shuttle Mir program . She was also an associate professor at the University of Texas until 1997 .

From 1993 Whitson was for three years the deputy head of the medical department of the JSC and the last two years (1995-1996) vice chair of the Russian-American scientific working group.

Astronaut activity

It was the first moon landing that made a deep impression on the elementary school student Whitson in 1969. Walking around the moon as an astronaut must be great, she thought. This was the trigger for her to want to fly into space. Her career aspirations received new nourishment when women were accepted into the astronaut squad for the first time nine years later.

Whitson was introduced to the public with NASA's 16th astronaut group in May 1996. The two-year basic training to become a mission specialist began in mid-August 1996 at the JSC. After that, because of her reputation , she was sent to Russia . Since 1989 she has been working there again and again. This time her job was to write the bilingual manuals for the ISS and to advise the US astronauts training in the Yuri Gagarin cosmonaut training center.

ISS expedition 5

Then Whitson prepared for her first space flight. She was immediately selected for a long-term mission. On board the STS-111 , she started with her commander Korsun and the flight engineer Treschtschow for the International Space Station (ISS) . The three formed the fifth long-term crew that worked on the station from June 2002. On August 16, Whitson and Korsun left the ISS for field work. In four and a half hours, they assembled six shields to protect against micrometeorites . A month later, she was named the first ISS science officer. NASA wanted to put the research on the space station more in the foreground. After 178 days, the three returned to Earth with STS-113 .

NEEMO 5

In the summer of 2003 Whitson spent a week and a half in the underwater laboratory "Aquarius" with astronauts Clayton Anderson and Garrett Reisman and three other volunteers . This excursion took place as part of the NEEMO program. The US space agency has been carrying out these "NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations" for years. NEEMO offers good preparation for space flight because the conditions are similar: you have to live with several people for a certain period of time in a confined space, you have to make do with resources , and problems have to be solved without outside help.

ISS expedition 14

Thereafter, Whitson was named vice chief of the astronauts bureau. From March 2005, she headed the ISS operations department at JSC for six months and has been training for her next flight since the end of 2005. As a commander, she was on the substitute team for Expedition 14 .

ISS expedition 16

In February 2007 she was officially appointed commander of Expedition 16 , which started on October 10, 2007. She was also the first female commander of the ISS. The return took place after 192 days on April 19, 2008.

NASA's chief astronaut

In October 2009, Peggy Whitson took up the post of chief astronaut at NASA. She replaced Steven Lindsey , who was preparing for the command of the STS-133 shuttle mission from this point on . In July 2012 she passed this position on to Robert Behnken .

ISS expeditions 50 to 52

On November 17, 2016, Whitson took off with the Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft for her third long-term stay on the ISS. There she initially works as a flight engineer for Expedition 50 . On March 30, 2017, Whitson left the ISS for the eighth time for a spacewalk. In doing so, she broke the previous record for the most spacecraft missions by a Sunita Williams woman . On April 10, 2017, she took command of ISS Expedition 51 . Already in the course of Expedition 50, NASA announced that Whitson would not return to Earth at the end of Expedition 51, but would spend three additional months with Expedition 52 on board the ISS. This was possible because the Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft started with only two space travelers instead of three and there was therefore a free space for the return on September 3, 2017.

On April 24, 2017, she set a new US record with a total of 534 days in space. On this occasion, US President Trump made a phone call with Whitson and her colleague Jack Fischer on board the ISS. Her use in the ISS expeditions 50 to 52 also increased the world record for the longest uninterrupted stay of a woman in space to 289 days. Christina Hammock Koch also surpassed this value on board the ISS at the end of 2019 .

Whitson left NASA on June 15, 2018.

Summary

No. mission function Flight date Flight duration
1 STS-111 / STS-113 Flight engineer 2002 184d 22h 15min
2 Soyuz TMA-11 / ISS Expedition 16 Flight engineer / commander 2007/2008 191d 19h 07min
3 Soyuz MS-03 / Expedition 50 / 51 / 52 Flight engineer / commander 2016/2017 289d 05h 01min

Private

Whitson is married and has no children.

See also

Web links

Commons : Peggy Whitson  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ NASA names crew for final space shuttle mission. Spaceflight Now, September 18, 2009, accessed September 19, 2009 .
  2. ↑ NASA names new Chief Astronaut: Shuttle veteran succeeds station record setter. collectSPACE, August 13, 2012, accessed on August 14, 2012 .
  3. ↑ heise online: US astronaut Whitson sets record with ISS field trip. Retrieved March 30, 2017 .
  4. ↑ NASA: NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson Adds Three Months to Record-Breaking Mission. In: NASA Press Release 17-038. April 5, 2017, accessed April 6, 2017 .
  5. ^ NASA: Presidential Calls to Space: A Timeless Tradition. April 24, 2017, accessed April 26, 2017 .
  6. ^ Robert Z. Pearlman: Astronaut Christina Koch Breaks Record for Longest Space Mission by a Woman. Space.com, December 30, 2019, accessed January 23, 2020 .
  7. ↑ NASA: Record-Setting NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson Retires. In: NASA Press Release 18-054. June 15, 2018, accessed June 15, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Whitson, Peggy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Whitson, Peggy Annette (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astronaut
DATE OF BIRTH February 9, 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Mount Ayr , Iowa