Nicole Stott | |
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| Born | (1962-11-19)November 19, 1962 (age 62) Albany, New York, U.S. |
| Education | St. Petersburg College Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (BS) University of Central Florida (MS) |
| Space career | |
| NASA astronaut | |
Time in space | 103d 5h 49m[1] |
| Selection | NASA Group 18 (2000) |
| Missions | STS-128 Expedition 20 Expedition 21 STS-129 STS-133 |
Mission insignia |      |
Nicole Marie Passonno Stott (born November 19, 1962) is an Americanengineer and a retiredNASAastronaut. She served as a flight engineer on ISSExpedition 20 andExpedition 21 and was a mission specialist onSTS-128 andSTS-133.[2] After 27 years of working at NASA, the space agency announced her retirement effective June 1, 2015.[3] She is married toChristopher Stott, aManx-born American space entrepreneur.
Stott was born inAlbany,New York and resides inSt. Petersburg, Florida. She attendedSt. Petersburg College studying aviation administration, graduated with aB.S. degree in aeronautical engineering fromEmbry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 1987, and received herM.S. degree in Engineering Management from theUniversity of Central Florida in 1992. Nicole Stott began her career in 1987 as a structural design engineer withPratt & Whitney Government Engines inWest Palm Beach,Florida. She spent a year with the Advanced Engines Group performing structural analyses of advanced jet engine component designs. Stott is an instrument rated private pilot.
In 1988, Stott joined NASA at theKennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida as an Operations Engineer in theOrbiter Processing Facility (OPF). After six months, she was detailed to the Director of Shuttle Processing as part of a two-person team tasked with assessing the overall efficiency of Shuttle processing flows, and implementing tools for measuring the effectiveness of improvements. She was the NASA KSC Lead for a joint Ames/KSC software project to develop intelligent scheduling tools. The Ground Processing Scheduling System (GPSS) was developed as the technology demonstrator for this project. GPSS was a success at KSC, and also a commercial success that is part of thePeopleSoft suite of software products. During her time at KSC, Stott also held a variety of positions within NASA Shuttle Processing, including Vehicle Operations Engineer; NASA Convoy Commander; assistant to the Flow Director forSpace Shuttle Endeavour; and Orbiter Project Engineer for Columbia. During her last two years at KSC, she was a member of the Space Station Hardware Integration Office and relocated to Huntington Beach, California where she served as the NASA Project Lead for the ISS truss elements under construction at the Boeing Space Station facility. In 1998, she joined theJohnson Space Center (JSC) team in Houston, Texas as a member of the NASA Aircraft Operations Division, where she served as a Flight Simulation Engineer (FSE) on theShuttle Training Aircraft (STA).
Selected as a mission specialist by NASA in July 2000, Stott reported for astronaut candidate training in August 2000. Following the completion of two years of training and evaluation, she was assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Station Operations Branch, where she performed crew evaluations of station payloads. She also worked as a support astronaut andCAPCOM for the ISSExpedition 10 crew. In April 2006, she was a crew member on theNEEMO 9 mission (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) where she lived and worked with a six-person crew for 18 days on theAquariusundersea research habitat.[4] Stott was previously assigned toExpedition 20 andExpedition 21. She was launched to theInternational Space Station with the crew ofSTS-128, participating in the firstspacewalk of that mission,[5] and returned onSTS-129, thus becoming the last Expedition crew-member to return to Earth via the space shuttle. Stott completed her second spaceflight onSTS-133, the third to last (antepenultimate) flight of the space shuttle.[6][7]
On October 21, 2009, Stott and her Expedition 21 crewmateJeff Williams participated in the firstNASA Tweetup from the station with members of the public gathered atNASA Headquarters inWashington, D.C.[8] This involved the firstliveTwitter connection for the astronauts.[9] Previously, astronauts on board the Space Shuttle or ISS had sent the messages they desired to send as tweets down toMission Control which then posted them via theInternet to Twitter.[10]
Stott was featured in a Super Bowl LIV commercial promotingGirls Who Code.[11] Stott has also written Back To Earth, described as "What Life in Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet and Our Mission to Protect It". She is also an artist and brought a small watercolor kit onISS Expedition 21 where she was the first person to paint with watercolor in space. Her current works often relate to astronomy including her Earth Observation collection and Spacecraft collection.[12][13] In 2022, she is providing the narration to a piece being performed by the Schenectady Symphony Orchestra, Glen Cortese's "Voyager: A Journey to the Stars."[14]
This article incorporatespublic domain material from websites or documents of theNational Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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