Melroy's Space

New Female Commander For The Shuttle
Here's the link.

Air Force Col. Pamela Ann Melroy will become the second woman to command a space shuttle mission when her crew heads to the international space station next year, NASA announced.

Melroy, 44, follows in the footsteps of Eileen Collins, who charted a groundbreaking career as the first woman to pilot and command a space shuttle.

Collins retired from NASA in May after serving as commander last year of the first space shuttle since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Melroy and five crew members will fly to the international space station aboard space shuttle Atlantis to deliver a module that eventually will connect to European and Japanese science laboratories, NASA announced Monday. The mission is tentatively slated for late summer 2007.

Other crew members are pilot George Zamka and mission specialists Scott Parazynski, Doug Wheelock, Mike Foreman and Paolo Nespoli.

It will be the third shuttle mission for Melroy, who served as a pilot on shuttle flights in 2000 and 2002. She is a native of Palo Alto, California, who graduated from Wellesley College and earned a master's degree in Earth and planetary sciences from MIT.

Hopefully this mission is all going to work out fine. We all know what a craptacular concept the shuttle is now, it's scary we're sending anybody up in it, but it does owe a few trips to the ISS.