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Mt. Ayr astronaut was 1st woman to command...

Reprinted courtesy of The Grinnell-Herald Register April 2, 2009.
Hailing from the little southern Iowa town of Mt. Ayr, Peggy Whitson has accumulated honors and records as an astronaut with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NSAS). Whitson will bring her experience and luster to Grinnell next month to help the Iowa Transportation Museum (ITM) inaugurate its National Transportation Heroes Center. Whitson will keynote the first induction of heroes into the center on May 1 at 10:00 a.m. in the Grinnell High School auditorium.

Whitson has served two extended tours in space, logging over 377 days in two shuttle and space station missions in 2002 (Expedition 5) and 2007-08 (Expedition 16). Whitson served as the first female commander of the international space station during her service on Expedition 16. That mission also marked the first time there were two female commanders on a mission when Whitson was joined by Pam Melroy who commanded the shuttle during the same mission.

Whitson holds the current record among U.S. astronauts for days spent in space and is ranked 20th among all astronauts for time away from earth. In a total of six “space walks” outside the shuttle and space station, Whitson has accumulated nearly 40 hours of time literally in space, more than any other female.

Whitson held numerous positions during the 1990s at NASA involving the joint US-USSR space station program and traveled to the station in Expedition 16 in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2007. During Expedition 16, she conducted a space walk wearing a Russian cosmonaut’s spacesuit. As she and two other members of the mission returned to earth in 2008, the Soyuz propulsion system did not separate properly from the capsule in which the humans were enclosed, resulting in a re-entry flight which subjected the humans to forces about eight times the normal gravitational pull.

Whitson was born in 1960 in Mt. Ayr, though she lists Beaconsfield as her home town. Graduating from Mt. Ayr high school in 1978, she earned a bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry from Iowa Wesleyan College in Mt. Pleasant in 1981 and a doctorate from Rice University in Houston in biochemistry in 1985.

Whitson began her career with NASA in 1986 and has held numerous positions and earned numerous awards including the Silver Snoopy Award, bestowed upon non-astronauts for materially aiding the life safety of astronauts. Her areas of expertise include biochemistry and biomedical research. She began working with the USSR joint program in 1991 and was selected for the two years of rigorous astronaut training in 1996.

During her first space station stay in 2002, Whitson helped to build out the station during space walks, as well as conducting biomedical experiments. During her second mission in 2007-08, Whitson oversaw the first expansion of the crew living and working quarters at the station in six years and addition of equipment sent by the European space agency, the Japanese, and the Canadians.