Pamela Melroy
Week of October 16, 2000

When NASA astronauts first walked on the moon in 1969, eight-year-old Pamela Melroy was watching. Very few people who saw the Eagle land have forgotten the sight, but for Pam, the experience was more than awe-inspiring-it changed the course of her life. Three years later, at the tender age of 11, she decided that she needed to set the highest possible goal for herself. She decided that she would be an astronaut. And unlike most children who make that decision, she never changed her mind.

"I was a cannonball shot through life straight at my target," Pam later wrote in an article for Wellesley magazine (winter 1997). As a high-school senior in 1978-79, Wellesley College was her top choice, because of its stellar reputation for astronomy and general science. She entered in 1979 with an ROTC scholarship, double majored in physics and astronomy, and ultimately served as Cadet Colonel, Wing Commander of the MIT Air Force ROTC. In 1983, commissioned as a second lieutenant in the US Air Force, with her Wellesley degree under her belt, she stayed at MIT for a year to complete a master's degree in Earth and planetary sciences. Now she had the educational credentials she needed in order to achieve her goal. It was time to take the next step.

Since all the Apollo astronauts had been military test pilots, Pam determined that she would be one, too. Pam got her Air Force wings in May 1985, after a year of active duty, and stepped right into what she calls "arguably the most desirable assignment available upon completion of pilot training, to fly one of the newest and most modern jets in the Air Force inventory." It was the KC-10, the military cargo/tanker equivalent of the DC-10. She spent six years flying out of Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, La., moving up the ranks, and eventually became one of her unit's senior instructors. "During all this time, I had told everyone who would stand still for a few minutes about my plan [to be an astronaut]," Pam remembered in her Wellesley article.

She got the chance to move a lot closer to her dream in 1991. While flying combat and combat support missions over Iraq and Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, Pam was notified that she had been selected for the Air Force's elite Test Pilot School-the third woman ever to be chosen. That June, she began a rigorous year that she describes as "kind of like getting a master's degree in flying at the same time you're getting a master's degree in aeronautical engineering." But before she'd even graduated, Pam got the call she'd been waiting for. NASA wanted her to come to Houston to interview for the Astronaut Corps.

Interviewing to become an astronaut is not your usual grip-and-grin, answering-questions business interview; that's only the beginning. The rest of the "interview" consists of roughly a week of physical examinations, and that's where Pam's dream went into a tailspin. Doctors discovered an intestinal condition so minor, Pam hadn't even realized she had it. But under NASA's rigorous medical regulations, it was enough to disqualify her permanently. It was 1992, and Pam's astronaut dream was over.

She returned to TPS to finish school, using all of her pilot's training to keep her mind on her work and off of her disappointment. It took her nearly a year to adjust to living without her childhood goal, even with the distraction of her new assignment: test flying the Air Force's brand-new C-17 jet. And then, a phone call changed everything again.

NASA had revised the medical regulations for the Astronaut Corps. She was no longer barred from applying. So, in the spring of 1994, she tried again, and was called for another week-long interview. And on Dec. 7, 1994, she made the cut. She reported to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, in March 1995, as an astronaut candidate.

After her year of astronaut training, Pam became the second American woman to qualify as a pilot of NASA's Space Shuttle. On the ground, she worked at the Johnson Space Center on NASA hardware and at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where she helped prepare the shuttle for launch and worked with it after landings.

In 1998, while she waited her turn to go into space, Pam returned to Wellesley College for a unique visit: She was to deliver the Commencement address. In her speech to the graduating class, Pam credited Wellesley with helping her to achieve the dream she'd held onto for so long. "The environment here gives women a place to dream without being restricted or blinded by culturally generated limits," she stated.

As a shuttle pilot, Pam was assigned to STS-92, the third Space Shuttle mission to assemble the International Space Station, and the last one to work on the station before it gets a permanent crew. Originally scheduled for 1998, STS-92 was repeatedly delayed. Eventually set for October 2000, the shuttle sat on the launch pad for days, waiting for technical difficulties to be resolved and for the weather to clear. Finally, on Oct. 11, 2000, at 7:17 p.m. Eastern time, Pamela Melroy '83-now the third female shuttle pilot-and the rest of the Space Shuttle crew blasted off into outer space.

*Photos taken from the NASA website.

Written by Liz Ruark