“"From the back seat of a T-38 to the left seat of Columbia."”
On July 23, 1999, space shuttle Columbia lifted off from Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center. In the commander’s seat sat Air Force Colonel Eileen Collins—the first woman to command a shuttle mission. It was her third spaceflight. She had already piloted STS-63 in 1995, the first shuttle rendezvous with the Russian Mir space station, and STS-84 in 1997. The 1999 mission, STS-93, deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory, then the heaviest payload ever launched by the shuttle program. The ascent was harrowing: a gold pin in the main engine came loose, damaged hydrogen cooling tubes, and a short circuit knocked out two digital control units. The engines kept running without redundancy; Collins and her crew pressed on. She landed Columbia four days later. In 2005, she commanded STS-114, NASA’s return-to-flight mission after the Columbia disaster. When she flew as the first woman shuttle pilot on STS-63 in 1995, seven of the surviving Mercury 13 women came to watch from the Kennedy VIP bleachers.
Collins’ assignment as commander required NASA to certify a female aviator for full authority over a four-person crew and a $1.5 billion observatory—an institutional milestone that validated the pilot-astronaut track for women.