Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper 84, Astronaut

Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper 84, Astronaut And speaking of awesome MIT alumna Later this month, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper 84 SM 85 (Commander, USN) will become the 24th MIT graduate in space when STS-115 launches. More than one-third of the nations space flights have included MIT-educated astronauts, who have logged a total of more than 15,000 hours in space. (Check out the MIT Astronaut Roster) While Stefanyshyn-Piper was at MIT, she lived at WILG, worked at the Lab for Manufacturing and Productivity, rowed for the Varsity Womens Crew, and did Navy ROTC. In her preflight interview, Stefanyshyn-Piper said of her MIT experience: The brief thumbnail sketch of getting here is, well, after high school I went to college, and I applied to MIT, you know, looking at different schools. I figured, OK, Massachusetts Institute of Tech, Technology, is a good technical school. Math and science were definitely my stronger subjects in high school, and so I figured Id probably do a career in something math and science. Back in the late 70s or early 80s, they were doing a big push to get a lot more girls to go into engineering. And so I said, OK, engineering, thats math and science, so I guess I can do that. So I applied to MIT and I got accepted, and then I took a Navy scholarship to help pay for college. From there, I got a degree in mechanical engineering actually I got two degrees. I had so much fun at MIT I decided to stay an extra year and finish my masters degree. And then I was commissioned in the Navy, and I did underwater ship repair and ship repair and some salvage work. That was kind of my professional backgroun d in the Navy. And then from there, I applied to the astronaut program and was fortunate enough to be accepted. And she says this about space exploration: To me exploring space is just a natural progression of, where humans are going. As we become more advanced and we have more technology to go farther. Thousands of years ago people would just go beyond the next hill, go over the mountain, go across the river. Then it led to going across the oceans. And, then it was OK, lets go into the skies. We now have airplanes. We can fly. We have submarines and submersibles; we can go into the waters. So looking into the skies and looking at the stars and at the planets and thinking, whats out there??? Were curious. We, as humans always want to know whats out there. To me it, it just seems natural that weve looked around here and were just going to go look out farther. Were still developing the means to go out there farther. But thats just where were going to go next. To me, exploration makes sense because were always looking at whats the next thing out there what else can we learn, and how can we go there. Maybe we can learn something that we c an bring back here and help solve some of the problems we have on Earth. If youre curious, NASA has even posted online a PDF of what she will be eating while shes in space. Day 1 dinner: grilled pork chop, mashed potatoes, broccoli au gratin, peach ambrosia, apple cider, and tea with lemon sugar. Wow, theyve come a long way since freeze-dried ice cream!