- Sandra Magnus, PhD
- Astronaut
Johnson Space Center
I was born in Belleville, Il in 1964. I first dreamed of becoming an Astronaut when I was in middle school. In 1978, the year that I started high school, NASA selected the first group of women Astronauts and I remember being very encouraged. After finishing high school at Belleville West I attended the University of Missouri — Rolla and studied physics. It was while I was at Rolla that I first was exposed to the field of engineering. After graduating I accepted at job in stealth technology at the McDonnell Douglas Company in St. Louis, Mo. At the same time I decided to get my Master’s degree in electrical engineering at night school, through the UMR evening program. I enjoyed my work at McDonnell Douglas; we were doing some cutting edge technology development, but my dream remained. So after nearly five years in the working world, I went back to school to study for a PhD at the Georgia Institute of Technology. I decided to study material science and engineering because while working on airplanes it was interesting learning how the selection of materials can influence the design; I wanted to learn more about how this worked. It was while I was finishing my PhD that I finally applied to the Astronaut program at NASA. I was lucky enough to be selected in 1996 along with 34 other US citizens. We were joined by 9 international astronauts to form the largest class that NASA had ever trained. I finally fulfilled my dream when I flew to the International Space Station on the shuttle Atlantis, mission STS-112, in October 2002.
One of the greatest things about being an Astronaut, besides getting to fly into space, is that we are constantly learning about new things and exploring new ideas. In the course of training for STS-112, I had to learn about life sciences, photography, earth sciences, emergency medical response, and of course the details of the tasks I had to perform on orbit. I am now in training for a long duration mission and again I have new learning opportunities, studying and living in Russia and learning that language as well as working with other cultures (countries of the European Space Agency, Canada, and Japan), in addition to further life and earth science education. Furthermore there is a variety of technical information that I must absorb to successfully do my job on orbit.
The NEEMO 11 mission is another great learning opportunity. NASA has several goals in undertaking missions on Aquarius. We are using the habitat as a training ground for preparing crews for long duration missions on the International Space Station and at the same time we are performing experiments and exploring operation scenarios that support the development of the Exploration initiative which will send people back to the moon and on to Mars. I am looking forward to comparing living underwater with flying in space. Both the oceans and space share something in common — they are important frontiers of exploration as we continue to try to learn more about our planet and our universe.
