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Heidemarie Martha Stefanyshyn-Piper (born February 7, 1963 in St. Paul, Minnesota) is an American astronaut with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Of Ukrainian-American extraction, Stefanyshyn-Piper graduated in 1980 from what was then the all-girls Derham Hall High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, and holds Bachelor of Science (1984) and Master's (1985) degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT, and is a Captain in the United States Navy. She is a licensed Amateur radio operator (ham) with Technician License KD5TVR.
[edit] Mission
- She flew her first mission on STS-115 (launched on September 9, 2006, returned September 21, 2006), as a Mission Specialist and became only the 8th woman to perform a spacewalk (out of 156 total spacewalkers).
- Her two EVAs for a total of 12 hours, 8 minutes made her the second most experienced female spacewalker. She also became the first Minnesotan woman to go into space.
On September 22, 2006, Stefanyshyn-Piper collapsed twice during a welcome-home ceremony with family and friends. She had "a couple of small dizzy spells" while speaking during the ceremony at Ellington Field in Houston. A flight surgeon examined Stefanyshyn-Piper, 43, and said she was fine, but still making the readjustment to Earth's gravity from the weightlessness of space.
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