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The first American to launch into space who was not a professional astronaut but a working scientist, Millie Hughes-Fulford, has died at the age of 75.
Hughes-Fulford’s death was confirmed by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF) on Thursday (February 4).
“We are grateful to him for his research and advancements in his work in the life sciences. Please join us in expressing our sympathy to Millie’s family and friends at this time, ”wrote Caroline Schumacher, ASF President and CEO, in an email.
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Originally selected by NASA in 1983 to train as a non-professional astronaut for a dedicated science space shuttle mission, the first and only launch of Hughes-Fulford was delayed by the Challenger tragedy of 1986. Taking off on Space Shuttle Columbia On June 5, 1991, Hughes-Fulford became the first female payload specialist to enter orbit and a member of the first crew to include three women.
She was also the first person to fly into space to represent the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), having served as a molecular biologist at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco at the time.
“It was the dream of a lifetime, and few of us realize our lifelong dream,” Hughes-Fulford said in a 2014 interview with the AV.
“I was watching Buck Rogers in 1950 when I was 5, and their pilot was a woman named Wilma Deering. I wanted to be Wilma Deering because she could wear pants. At that time, a little girl could not walk around in pants. I would sneak into my pair of Levi’s and hear, ‘Get out of those Levi’s, put on your dress!’ “She said.” And so I wanted to be Wilma Deering because she could wear whatever she wanted, she piloted a spaceship and was a professional woman. “
“It was a dream and it turned into a reality, which was awfully nice,” she said.
As a member of the STS-40 crew, Hughes-Fulford was responsible for overseeing some of the experiments aboard Spacelab Life Sciences 1 (SLS-1), the fifth Spacelab mission and the first dedicated solely to biomedical research. As a cell biologist, one of his jobs was to help collect blood from his teammates.
“It wasn’t like you just pulled out a tube of blood and put it in the fridge. It was, you have to do a finger stick and get a hematocrit. You have to take blood for that and spin it around and separate it. serum of blood. You have to put this in the fridge right away. It was like collecting six or seven things for each draw, then you have four people, so you have a lot of different moving parts, ” Rhea Seddon, one of Hughes-Fulford’s STS-40 teammates, said in a 2011 NASA oral history interview.
The STS-40 crew performed more than 18 experiments (including 10 involving humans, seven involving rodents, and one with jellyfish) and returned to Earth with more medical data than any other NASA space flight. “We’re 140% of what we expected to be doing,” Hughes-Fulford said in a TV interview in space.
But even after recording 9 days, 2 hours, 14 minutes and 2 seconds off the planet, the Hughes-Fulford mission was not over. Along with Seddon, mission specialist Jim Bagian, and fellow payload specialist Drew Gaffney, Hughes-Fulford stayed for a week at the landing site to continue to provide data on how the human body went. readjusted for gravity.
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Millie Elizabeth Hughes-Fulford was born in Mineral Wells, Texas on December 21, 1945. Entering college at the age of 16, she received her Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry and Biology from Tarleton State University in 1968, then studied plasma chemistry at Texas Woman’s University as a National Science Foundation graduate fellow from 1968 to 1971.
After completing her doctorate at Texas Women’s University in 1972, Hughes-Fulford joined the faculty of Southwestern Medical School at the University of Texas at Dallas as a postdoctoral fellow, where his research focused on the regulation of metabolism. cholesterol. She also served as a major in the US Army Reserve Medical Corps from 1981 to 1995.
Originally assigned to backup payload specialist Robert Phillips for the SLS-1 (STS-40) mission, Hughes-Fulford joined the main crew after Phillips was medically disqualified from the flight.
After her space flight, Hughes-Fulford returned to the VA Medical Center in San Francisco, where she became director of the lab that now bears her name. She has contributed to over 120 papers and abstracts on T cell activation, regulation of bone and cancer growth, and has continued to conduct research in space as a principal investigator for experiments that flew on board. STS-76 in March 1996, STS-81 in January. 1997 and STS-84 in May 1997, examining the root causes of osteoporosis that occur in astronauts in microgravity.
She also performed experiments aboard the Soyuz and SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, studying the decreased activation of T cells – a medical problem that was first discovered in Apollo astronauts from back – and how isolated T cells were activated in spaceflight. (T cells are a type of white blood cell that is important for the body’s immune system.)
“If you think about it, we’ve all evolved in a gravity field. When we go into space flight and we have microgravity, we’ve eliminated a variable. In math, if you get rid of a variable, you can solve equation, and we’re able to look at the immune system in a whole new way that hasn’t been possible, ”Hughes-Fulford said in a video interview for the ISS National Laboratory in 2015.
Recipient of the NASA Space Flight Medal in 1991, Hughes-Fulford’s research aboard the space station was awarded by NASA as Top Discovery on the ISS.
Hughes-Fulford was married to George Fulford, who predeceased her in death. She is survived by their daughter, Tori Herzog.
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