January 1986 was the beginning of the worst year of my life.  On Jan. 28 the Challenger exploded killing seven Astronauts, my friends.  It was totally unexpected and unprecedented.  Our entire space program was set adrift.  What could we do? We had to begin with what had to be done.  It was an incredibly sad and difficult time. First, there were grieving families to support.  Then there were bodies to retrieve and to bury with honor.  A cause...

In the “olden days” when Space Shuttle flights were just beginning, as Astronauts were named to flights there were several things that had to be done.  An announcement was sent to the Public Affairs Office for release to the press.  Next a crew picture was taken and a patch designed.  The payload was assigned to the mission and the appropriate Space Shuttle chosen.  On occasion that careful planning went haywire. When I was assigned to fly in...

The days after the Challenger accident in 1986 were terrible. All of NASA and its contractors were put to work to find and fix the cause of the tragedy. When the corrective actions were taken and the country was ready, NASA prepared for its new missions. Little did anyone know that danger awaited one of the next flight crews. In an effort to keep Mission Control personnel and Astronaut crews well trained, two “practice” flights were designed...

My husband, Hoot, and I had many exciting moments in our Astronaut careers.  “Roll out” was always a thrilling time as we prepared for our flights.  Many steps, many people, many machines made that day possible.  Eventually, that special day would come when the enormous doors on the Vehicle Assembly Building, the VAB, at the Kennedy Space Center opened and our glorious Space Shuttle began its slow journey to the launch pad.  The most awesome...

According to a legend, old elephants go to a mythical place to die – an elephant boneyard.  Do you know that there is another kind of “boneyard” on the desert sands in Arizona? One day when Hoot and I were flying from Houston to the west coast he said, “Look at what’s on the ground below.”  As he dipped the left wing of our NASA jet, I looked down and was reminded of pictures I had seen of the English countryside just before the D-Day...

The Russians were coming!  It was 1957, and their Sputnik satellite was orbiting the Earth.  Would they attack us from space?  We were scared. The Space Race…it was on. Could I ever be a part of it? In April 1961, the Russian Yuri Gagarin orbited above us.  In May of that year, President John Kennedy set the audacious goal for the United States to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade – which most of us...