Eileen Collins

Eileen Marie Collins (born 19 November 1956) is an American retired NASA astronaut and Air Force colonel. A flight instructor and test pilot, Collins was the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle and the first to command a Space Shuttle mission.

A graduate of Corning Community College, where she earned an associate degree in mathematics in 1976, and Syracuse University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and economics in 1978, Collins was commissioned as an officer in the USAF through Syracuse's Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps program. She was one of four women chosen for Undergraduate Pilot Training at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma. After earning her pilot wings, she stayed on at Vance for three years as a T-38 Talon instructor pilot before transitioning to the C-141 Starlifter at Travis Air Force Base, California. During the U.S. invasion of Grenada in October 1983, her aircraft flew troops of the 82nd Airborne Division from (then) Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina to Grenada, and took thirty-six medical students back. From 1986 to 1989, she was an assistant professor in mathematics and a T-41 instructor pilot at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado. She earned a Master of Science degree in operations research from Stanford University in 1986, and a Master of Arts degree in space systems management from Webster University in 1989. That year, she became the second woman pilot to attend the USAF Test Pilot School, graduating with class 89B.