Eileen Collins: A Brief Biography

Throughout career as an astronaut, Eileen Collins achieved several firsts in the history of space travel. Collins was the first woman to command a space shuttle in 1999. Eileen Marie Collins was born on November,19,1956, in Elmira New York. Collins's earliest life visiting Harris Hills and watching planes fly off the ridge of the city. Another favorite memory is going to the local airport with her parents and watching planes take off. When Collins was nine years old, her mother and father separated. It was an emotionally difficult time in Collins's life, made only worse by economic hardship. Her father lost his job and mother was looking for one. Later on her parents found jobs. But there was still a little room for luxury life. Callins Wanted

most was flying lessons. Collins’s work hard to make a money, to pay for private lessons how to fly. During high school, she worked nights at a pizza place to save up the $1,000 for private lessons. At age nineteen, she stepped on her first plane with passion that she wanted to be a professional pilot.
Collins spent lots of time studying about military flying.” I had been reading about pilots, and it fascinated me” she explained to Al Weisel of U.S magazine.

After high school Collin enrolled at Corning Community College in New York, where she received an associates degree in mathematics in 1974. After college, she joined the Reserve officer Training Corps (ROTC). ROTC is a college based program that prepares people for advanced military careers. She got ROTC scholarship, after that Collins attended Syracuse University in New York and graduated in 1978, with bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics. U.S navy accepted women as pilots in 1974, the U.S. Air force did not until 1976. In 1978, when Collins set her sights on attending Undergraduate Pilot Training school at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma, she was one the first group of 120 females to apply. She was one of the four women chosen, rest of her classmates were men. After years of the training, the twenty-three-old Collins become the U.S. Air Force first female flight instructor. From 1979 until 1790 Collins taught how to fly in Oklahoma, California, and Colorado. she also served as an assistant professor of mathematics at the U.S Air Force Academy in Colorado Spring. 1986 Collins earning a master of science degree in Operation Research from California’s Stanford University. She also earned a master of arts degree in space systems management from Webster University, St. Louis, Missouri. After graduating in 1990,

National Astronautics and Space Administration ( NASA) chose Collin to become an astronaut. Collins’s basic astronaut training included several courses in land and water survival. Also classes included the history of the space program, weather, medicine, and mechanics. The most difficult part of the training was the Simulator. Over the next five years Collins served as a Spacecraft communicator, and then as the Astronaut Office Spacecraft Systems Branch chief, Chief Information Officer, shuttle Branch Chief, and Astronaut Safety Branch Chief. Collins became NASA’s first female shuttle pilot in 1995 during the space agency's STS-63, which involved a rendezvous between Discovery and Russian space station Mir. In recognition of her achievement as the first female shuttle pilot as she received the Harmon Trophy.
Eileen Collins quote: “When I was a child, I dreamed about space-I admired pilots, astronauts, and I’ve admired explorers of all kinds. It was only a dream that I would someday be one of them. It is my hope that all children”boys and girls” will see this mission and be inspired to reach for their dreams, because dreams do come true” She married in 1987 and had two children. “ I had been gone from my family and I sort of want to make it up to them this summer and spend a good summer with my family” said Collins, the mother of a 10-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son. Her husband is former Air Force pilot Pot, Youngs. “I find as a woman, maybe I can encourage other women to go into this field” she said “ I think that is really an opportunity that I have that I take seriously.”