Next month, Stephanie Wilson will go from looking at the stars to traveling among them. Wilson, 39, who has been a NASA astronaut for 10 years, is one of seven crew members who will travel on the Space Shuttle Discovery to the International Space Station. The flight is scheduled to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on July 1.
The crew is scheduled to spend its 12-day mission testing new equipment and procedures that increase the safety of future space shuttles, deliver supplies and cargo designed for the repair and future expansion of the space station, and conduct two and possibly three space walks.
Wilson, one of four mission specialists on the crew, will assist on the two scheduled space walks by astronauts Michael Fossum and Piers Sellers. The walks will take place on the fifth and seventh days of the flight. Each walk, scheduled for 61/2 hours, will be done to make repairs to the space station.
"It's very exciting," Wilson said last week via conference call from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the crew underwent a press briefing. "It has been a long time. And it has been worth the wait. I am very happy with the training I've received. ... I am looking forward to executing my part in the mission, and looking out the window a time or two."
Does Wilson
"I hope so," she said. "I'm going to take some photos."
Wilson will become the second African-American woman to go into space, and the first since Mae C. Jemison in 1992.
One of four African-American women who have been in the space program, Wilson said she has trouble seeing herself as a role model.
"But I would understand if people saw me in that role," she said.
Wilson said she hasn't encountered any gender or racial prejudices in the space program.
"Really, the obstacles were not so much being a woman, but really being small, which goes hand-in-hand with being a woman," said Wilson who is 5 feet 21/2 inches tall. ("I am really proud of the half," she said.)
Wilson's duties will include helping Sellers use a 50-foot robotic-arm inspection boom as a potential work platform to get to hard-to-reach repair sites on the bottom of the station. (Whether the third space walk occurs will be determined once the crew is in space.)
Wilson will operate a hand-held laser on the day Discovery docks with the space station to give Flight Commander Steven Lindsey distance and velocity information that will help guide the vessel's approach. Wilson also will be on the flight deck when Discovery re-enters the atmosphere and will assist Lindsey and pilot Mark Kelly, a Navy commander, in landing the vessel.
The mission's primary focus, according to NASA, is to carry on the analysis of safety improvements that began with the most recent mission to the International Space Station, a journey that took place last summer.
That flight, STS-114, was known as the first "Return to Flight" mission, because it was the first that had occurred since the tragedy involving the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003. Seven astronauts were killed on that flight.
Mission STS-121 is the first space flight for Wilson, who was born in Boston and grew up in Pittsfield, graduating from Taconic High School in 1984. She earned her bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1988 and her master's from the University of Texas in 1992.
The Discovery crew contains two other astronauts making their initial flight into space, plus mission specialist Thomas Reiter of Germany, who is representing the European Space Agency.
Reiter will remain at the space station to assist Expedition 13 commander Pavel Vinogradov and flight engineer Jeffrey Williams, who have been there since arriving on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on April 1.
Parents in Pittsfield
Although Wilson lives in the Houston suburb of Clear Lake, her parents — Eugene and Bar-bara Wilson — still reside in Pittsfield. Their daughter visits at least once a year, usually around the Christmas holidays, according to Karen Cassidy, a Pittsfield native who has known Wilson since they attended Stearns Elementary School.
"She has a strong attachment to her hometown and her friends from here," she said.
Cassidy, who sells computer software, said she visits Wilson when she travels to Houston on business.
Wilson credits the people she knew in Pittsfield, especially the teachers and staff at Taconic, with helping her achieve her goals.
"They were very encouraging," Wilson said. "They really told me that there weren't any limits, that I could do whatever I want, that I could study whatever I wanted to in school."
Robert Coakley, Taconic's guidance counselor director for 30 years before retiring in 1999, said Wilson had unlimited potential after graduating from high school.
"I don't know if she said she wanted to be an astronaut, but she was an extremely bright, just wonderful young lady," Coakley said. "Anything that she wanted, the sky was the limit.
"I remembered when she applied to Harvard," Coakley continued. "She said, 'I'm a little concerned,' but I said, 'Don't worry, Stephanie, they'd be happy to have you.' "
Through a family acquaintance, Wilson's parents declined to speak with The Eagle, saying they would rather the focus be on their daughter.
Cassidy said Wilson, who is married and an only child, is close with her parents and several cousins, most of whom live in the Boston and Atlanta areas.
Wilson is taking her affection with Pittsfield into space by carrying mementos from the three Pittsfield schools she attended — Stearns, Crosby and Taconic. (Crosby, now an elementary school, was a middle school during the early 1980s.)
Schools gave banners
Crosby and Taconic gave Wilson banners for the flight. Taconic's banner has "Class of 1984" written on it. Stearns gave Wilson a blanket with signed pictures of students and a picture of the shuttle. Wilson also will carry mementos from Harvard and the University of Texas.
"NASA allows us to carry items for organizations.," Wilson said. "I requested items from all my schools. I won't be able to see it during the mission, but it will be packed away with the other crew members' (mementos). They call it the 'official flight kit.' "
Wilson said she'll return the Stearns, Crosby and Taconic me-mentos to Pittsfield after the mission is over.
"I will come back personally as part of our post-flight activities," Wilson said. "They are currently setting that schedule, so I don't know when I will be back."
Wilson said her interest in space began when she was a 13-year-old middle-school student at Crosby.
"I had a career-awareness class in eighth grade," she said. "Our assignment was to go and interview someone in a career field that we might be interested in."
Wilson said she chose Williams College professor Jay M. Pasa-choff, a well-known astronomer who has written several textbooks and tradebooks in astronomy, physics, mathematics and other sciences. A member of the Willi-ams faculty since 1972, Pasachoff is chair of the college's astronomy department and director of the Hopkins Observatory.
"He talked to me all about astronomy, told me about how he traveled around the world to have a better viewing of some of the solar events," Wilson said. "I just was fascinated. I thought that was great work. As a child, what better job than to stay up all night and sleep during the day? That was sort of my initial interest in space."
Pasachoff, who is in New Zea-land studying the planet Pluto with fellow professors, said by e-mail that Wilson has invited him and his wife to Florida to view the launch of STS-121. Wilson accepted an invitation to give a lecture at Williams a few years ago, and recently participated in a telephone conference for a college seminar on the progress of astronomy, he added.
"But I don't remember the specific meeting we had," Pasachoff wrote, referring to his meeting with Wilson when she was in middle school. "It is fabulous that she remembers it well enough to even mention it on her official NASA Web page biography."
Wilson was a high honors student at Taconic, with math, science and English her favorite courses.
At Harvard, she earned her bachelor's degree in engineering science. After two years working as a loads and dynamics engineer for the Martin Marietta Astro-nautics Group in Denver, Wilson returned to school and earned her master's in aerospace science from Texas.
Began at Harvard
Wilson said her interest in becoming an astronaut "was sort of a gradual change" that began while she attended Harvard, when she wrote to NASA inquiring about careers for astronomers.
"They sent other information on careers for engineers and scientists and becoming an astronaut, and the information said that if you have a degree in engineering science, or math, or medicine, or aviation experience, that makes one eligible to become an astronaut," Wilson said. "I said, 'That's great, because that's where my interests are.' "
Wilson said she decided to pursue her interest in engineering science, "and if it happens that I apply to become an astronaut, and they accept me, well, that will be wonderful."
Wilson was working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasade-na, Calif., a facility managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology, when she submitted her first astronaut application in 1993.
Her initial application was re-jected, but Wilson said she re-applied each of the next two years. NASA brought her in for an interview in January 1996 after her third application, and she was hired shortly thereafter. NASA rarely hires astronauts after an initial interview, Wilson said.
"I was very blessed," she said. "Everyone said, 'Oh, it takes several interviews. Don't worry about this one.' ... I thought for sure I'll be back. So I was very comfortable, very calm, and I think that helped me."
Took longer than expected
Wilson said it has taken her longer than expected to get into space.
"We were all told we would fly in three to five years," Wilson said. "I did not expect it to be 10 years."
Wilson didn't specifically ad-dress the danger factor during the conference call. Three of her classmates in NASA's astronaut class of 1996 perished in the Columbia disaster, including that mission's pilot, William McCool, to whom she was close. Wilson once watched McCool's cat when his family went on vacation. She said she still stays in touch with his family.
"I think the best way to remember them in high esteem is to continue to fly in space," Wilson said. "I have thoughts of them very, very often. I wish that they were here with us. Much like I was excited for them in their mission, particularly my classmates, I know that they would be excited for me in my mission. I know that they would want to continue the shuttle program."
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