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(Journalist)
– Millie Hughes-Fulford, a pioneering astronaut and scientist who became the first female payload specialist to fly into space for NASA, died last week after a years-long battle with cancer, said her family. She was 75 years old. Hughes-Fulford was selected by NASA for its astronaut program in 1983 and in June 1991 spent nine days in orbit on the Columbia shuttle, conducting experiments on the effect of space travel on humans as part of the agency’s first mission dedicated to biomedical studies, STS-40. She and her teammates have circled the Earth 146 times, the AP reports. The research shaped the rest of her career, and upon her return, she established the Hughes-Fulford lab at the San Francisco VA Healthcare System, which worked to understand the mechanisms that regulate cell growth in mammals. “She came back to her world as a scientist and carried that experience of flying into space and that became a unique filter through which she spent all of her scientific work,” said Dr. Mike Barratt, NASA flight surgeon assigned to Columbia. .
“She told me that when she took off in the shuttle, she had absolutely no fear,” her granddaughter said. “She was logically thinking of her next task, and that’s how she faced everything, including her cancer.” Millie Elizabeth Hughes was born in 1945 in Mineral Wells, Texas. At 16, she entered Tarleton State University, where she majored in chemistry and biology and was often the only woman in the class. The men didn’t appreciate her outperforming them in exams, her granddaughter said. After earning a doctorate in biochemistry, she applied to 100 college jobs across the country and got four responses. She accepted a lab job. In 1978, Hughes-Fulford responded to a magazine ad seeking candidates to be the first woman in space. She hit the last 20, out of 8,000 applicants, before Sally Ride was chosen, then went to space on the Columbia as a researcher. “Millie has been an inspiration on so many levels, from the earth’s surface to low earth orbit,” said a colleague. “She imbued every conversation with compassion, optimism, energy, humor and an unwavering confidence that a solution could be found.
(Read more obituaries.)
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