Lisa Nowak
Lisa Marie Nowak is an American aeronautical engineer, former NASA astronaut, and retired United States Navy officer. Nowak served as naval flight officer and test pilot in the Navy, and was selected by NASA for NASA Astronaut Group 16 in 1996, qualifying as a mission specialist in robotics. She flew in space aboard during the STS-121 mission in July 2006, when she was responsible for operating the robotic arms of the shuttle and the International Space Station. In 2007, Nowak was involved in a highly publicized incident of criminal misconduct for which she eventually pleaded guilty to felony burglary and misdemeanor battery charges, resulting in her demotion from captain to commander, termination by NASA, and forced retirement from the Navy.
Born in Washington, D.C., Nowak graduated from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1985. She was assigned to VAQ-34 at Naval Air Station Point Mugu, California, where she flew the EA-7L Corsair and ERA-3B Skywarrior. She earned a Master of Science degree in aeronautical engineering and a degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. In 1993 she was selected to attend the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. After graduation, she remained at Patuxent River, flying in the F/A-18 Hornet and EA-6B Prowler. During her Navy career she logged over 1,500 hours in more than 30 aircraft and was awarded the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal and the Navy Achievement Medal.
In February 2007, Nowak was arrested in Orlando, Florida, after she accosted and pepper-sprayed Colleen Shipman, a U.S. Air Force captain romantically involved with astronaut William Oefelein, who had been in a relationship with Nowak. She was released on bail and initially pleaded not guilty to the charges, which included attempted kidnapping, burglary with assault, and battery. Subsequently, her assignment as an astronaut was terminated by NASA. In 2009, Nowak agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to charges of felony burglary of a car and misdemeanor battery. She remained a Navy captain until the following year when a Naval Board of Inquiry voted unanimously to reduce her in rank to commander and to retire her from the Navy under other than honorable conditions after 25 years of service. it was reported that she was working in the private sector in Texas.
Early life and education
Lisa Marie Caputo was born in Washington, D.C., on May 10, 1963, to Alfredo F. Caputo, a computer consultant, and Jane L. Caputo, a biological specialist. Caputo and her two younger sisters, Andrea and Marisa, grew up in Rockville, Maryland. In 1969, she watched the Apollo 11 Moon mission and became interested in the space program. While growing up, she followed the Space Shuttle program, particularly the introduction of female astronauts in 1978, and paid frequent visits to the National Air and Space Museum.Caputo was educated at Luxmanor Elementary School, Tilden Middle School, and Charles W. Woodward High School in North Bethesda, Maryland. In the January of her junior year of high school, she told her mother that she was going to become an astronaut. She was a Girl Scout, and a member of the Société Honoraire de Français, which required students to maintain an A average in French and a B average in all other subjects. She competed on the math team and served on her class student council. She played field hockey and competed in track and field athletics. In 1981 she was named Student Athlete of the Year, a school award granted to the student who excelled most in both sports and academics, and graduated as co-valedictorian. In her final year of high school, Caputo was accepted by Brown University, a private Ivy League university in Providence, Rhode Island, and by the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Her parents thought Brown was the best choice, but Caputo felt that she had more chance of achieving her goal of becoming an astronaut by going to the Naval Academy.
Women were first admitted to Annapolis in 1976, and by the time Caputo entered as a plebe in 1981, there were women in each of the four classes, but were only 6 percent of the student body. Female midshipmen were still harassed by some male classmates in 1981, and occasionally a male professor would inform a class that he did not think women belonged there. As a student, she competed on the track team. She graduated on May 22, 1985, with a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering, and was commissioned as an ensign in the United States Navy.
Navy career
For her first assignment, Caputo chose a six-month secondment to the Johnson Space Center, where she worked as an aerospace engineer at its branch at Ellington Air Force Base near Houston, Texas. During this time, there were six Space Shuttle launches. "What impressed me", she later said, "was the whole idea that everybody was so into what they were doing and excited that each of their parts was so important."File:EA-7L VAQ-34 at Elmendorf AFB 1987.JPEG|thumb|right|An LTV EA-7L Corsair II of VAQ-34 in 1987|alt=refer to caption
In December 1985, Caputo received orders to report to Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida for flight training. By law, women were still banned from combat assignments, so half the jobs in the Navy were unavailable to women regardless of aptitude or ability, and there were doubts about the wisdom of training women for jobs they were not permitted to do. Getting accepted into flight training was a major achievement, and those women that did so were often resented by men who were passed over. Caputo completed primary flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola on the T-2 Buckeye, T-39 Sabreliner and TA-4J Skyhawk and qualified as a naval flight officer in June 1987.
Caputo's NFO training continued at the Electronic Warfare School at Corry Station in preparation to fly electronic warfare aircraft. She then went to the Naval Air Station Lemoore, where she qualified to operate the electronic systems on the LTV EA-7L Corsair II. On April 6, 1988, she married an Annapolis classmate, Richard T. Nowak, at the Naval Academy Chapel with Catholic rites, and changed her last name to "Nowak". Her next assignment was to Electronic Warfare Aggressor Squadron 34 at Naval Air Station Point Mugu, California, where she flew on both the Corsair II and the Douglas ERA-3B Skywarrior, supporting the U.S. Pacific Fleet on reconnaissance mission exercises. She qualified as a mission commander and electronic warfare lead.
In 1990, Nowak entered the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where she earned both a Master of Science degree in aeronautical engineering and a degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering in September 1992, writing a thesis on Computational Investigations of a NACA 0012 Airfoil in Low Reynolds Number Flows. She gave birth to a son in February 1992. After graduate school, she transferred to the restricted line as an Aerospace Engineering Duty Officer. She was selected to attend the United States Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, after she applied six times. She graduated in June 1994, and then became an aircraft systems project officer at the Air Combat Environment Test and Evaluation Facility and at Strike Aircraft Test Squadron at Patuxent River. As a naval flying officer/flight test engineer, she participated in the development of the F/A-18 Hornet and EA-6B Prowler. Her next assignment was to the Naval Air Systems Command, where she was involved in the acquisition of new systems for naval aircraft. During her career in the Navy, Nowak logged over 1,500 hours of flight time in more than 30 different aircraft and was awarded the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal and the Navy Achievement Medal.
NASA career
Astronaut training
On June 15, 1995, NASA announced that it was selecting a new group of astronauts. As a naval officer, Nowak could not apply directly, like a civilian could, but had to submit her application to a review board that would then approve it and forward it on to NASA, which it did. NASA received over 2,400 applications, and in early 1996, Nowak was informed that she was one of 150 finalists deemed highly qualified, and she was asked to report to Johnson Space Center for a week of orientation, interviews and medical evaluations.On May 1, 1996, NASA publicly announced the names of 10 pilot and 25 mission specialist candidates; Nowak was one of the latter. The class of 1996, the 16th group of NASA astronauts, was the largest selected since the first class of Space Shuttle astronauts in 1978, which also numbered 35. They were ordered to report for duty at Johnson Space Center to commence their astronaut training on August 12, 1996. They were joined by nine international astronauts. Because there were so many of them, they were often packed into classrooms and training facilities, and called themselves "The Sardines".
Nowak and her family moved to Texas, where they built a house in Clear Lake City. Her husband, another naval flight officer, left active duty in 1998 but continued to fly in the United States Naval Reserve. He found a job as a space communications contractor with Barrios Technology, an aerospace company, and worked at the Johnson Space Center as a flight controller at the mission control center.
File:Nowak, Kelly and Lindsey review data on a computer monitor.jpg|thumb|left|Nowak reviews data on a computer monitor with Mark Kelly and Steven W. Lindsey during a training session at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.|alt=refer to caption
Astronaut training included survival training, a three-day trip to the Grand Canyon to study geology, and classwork on the Space Shuttle's many systems. As a mission specialist, she was expected to fly a minimum of four hours a month in NASA's Northrop T-38 Talon aircraft. Training was conducted in the waters of the Weightless Environment Training Facility and in the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker known as the Vomit Comet that flies a trajectory that gives the sensation of being in space. She completed her astronaut training in August 1998. On September 28, 1998, she returned to Annapolis along with fellow astronaut alumni Jim Lovell, Charles O. Hobaugh, David Leestma, John M. Lounge, Bryan D. O'Connor and Pierre J. Thuot, for a celebration of the life of Mercury Seven astronaut Alan Shepard, who had died two months before.
In early 2001, Nowak became pregnant with twins. At the Astronaut Office, Nowak specialized in the operation of the Space Shuttle's robotic arm. She also served with the CAPCOM Branch, the astronauts that worked with the mission control center as the primary communicators with the spacecraft. She performed this duty during the STS-100 mission in April 2001, when the crew of the installed a robot arm in the International Space Station. In October 2001, she gave birth to twin daughters. Nowak and her husband alternated their work schedules so one of them was always with the children. This arrangement lasted until Richard was recalled to active duty in 2002 to participate in Operation Enduring Freedom, which effectively left Nowak a single mother with three young children.
On December 12, 2002, NASA announced the crew for STS-118, a mission scheduled for November 2003. Scott Kelly would be the mission commander, Hobaugh the pilot, and the mission specialists would be Nowak, Scott Parazynski, Dafydd Williams, and Barbara Morgan. The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003, killed seven astronauts on the STS-107 mission, including three from Nowak's 1996 astronaut class. It was NASA's practice to provide the families of astronauts who had died with a personal casualty assistance officer, and Nowak performed this duty for the family of her close friend Laurel Clark. Clark's widower, Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon, recalled that:
The disaster resulted in a series of schedule and hardware changes. The task of testing all the changes was assigned to STS-114, the Return to Flight mission, but the list of changes that required testing grew so large that a second Return to Flight mission was added to the schedule to accommodate them. Despite the numbering, this mission, STS-121, would be the second mission flown after the Columbia disaster. STS-121 was primarily concerned with testing and developing new hardware and procedures to make Space Shuttle flights safer. It would also re-supply the ISS with equipment and consumables.
In January 2004, Nowak participated in an eleven-day cold weather survival training course in Canada with fellow NASA astronauts Dominic Antonelli and William Oefelein, Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang, Russian cosmonaut Dmitri Kondratyev, and Canadian astronaut Julie Payette. The course commenced on January 19, and included four days of instruction with the Canadian Armed Forces. They were then dropped off in the wilderness in northern Quebec and had to make their way back on foot. They covered in eleven days, completing the course on January 29. Nowak had worked together with Oefelein, who had been selected as an astronaut with the class of 1998, when they were both stationed at Patuxent River in 1995.
When Nowak and Oefelein returned to Houston they began an extramarital affair, which they attempted to conceal. As serving Navy officers, they could have been charged with conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, which includes adultery, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Oefelein's wife filed for divorce in February 2005 after discovering emails between him and Nowak. Their divorce was finalized in May 2005. Oefelein moved into a small apartment, to which he gave Nowak a key. She left personal effects there, and she soon became a familiar sight to other residents of the complex.