Harvard Overseer Launches into Space

Stephanie D. Wilson ’88, a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers, launched into space for the third time yesterday on the space shuttle Discovery.

Wilson, an astronaut for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and a missions specialist on this flight, will be working with other crew members at the International Space Station, according to a NASA press release. The mission will last for 13 days.

Wilson joined NASA in 1996 and flew her first mission a decade later. She is the second African-American woman to ever fly in space.

Wilson received her undergraduate degree in engineering science from Harvard and a masters degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas.

Wilson started her term on the Board of Overseers, Harvard’s second-highest governing body, in 2007. She has also returned to Harvard several times to lecture about her experiences as an astronaut, according to John W. Hutchinson, who taught her as an undergraduate in Engineering Sciences 120: “Introduction to the Mechanics of Solids.”

During her undergraduate years, Wilson was “very calm and collected,” according to Hutchinson, who also served as her adviser. “She was very confident of herself in a very relaxed manner.”

In a question-and-answer session with Wilson posted on the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Web site, Wilson said she decided to be an astronaut at the age of 13.

“I’m originally from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a small town without a lot of city lights,” she said. “I’d look up at night in my backyard and see all the stars.”

Leonard Solomon, a project manager for the Anderson Research Group, a laboratory where Wilson worked as an undergraduate, continues to stay in touch with Wilson. “She wanted to be an astronaut way back then,” he said.

Solomon is a songwriter, and on Wilson’s first flight into space, Wilson brought along a copy of one of Solomon’s CDs and took a photograph of it floating in the shuttle, Solomon said.

Over the course of her career, Wilson has been in space for over 28 days, according to the NASA Web site. Her last mission took place in 2007.

“She waited something like 10 or 12 years before she ever flew at all,” Solomon said. “Then she had three flights quickly in a row.”

—Eric P. Newcomer can be reached at newcomer@fas.harvard.edu.