Peggy Whitson
Peggy Annette Whitson (born February 9, 1960) is an American biochemistry researcher, NASA astronaut. Whitson was born in Mount Ayr, Iowa, received a bachelor of science degree in biology and chemistry from Iowa Wesleyan College in 1981. She then went on to earn her doctorate degree in biochemistry from Rice University in 1985, and following completion of her graduate work, continued at Rice as a Robert A Welch Post-doctoral Fellow until October 1986. She is married to Clarence F. Sams, Ph.D. Following her fellowship at Rice, she began working at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. From April 1988 until September 1989, Whitson served as the Supervisor for the Biochemistry Research Group at KRUG International, a medical sciences contractor at NASA-JSC. From 1991 through 1997, Whitson was invited to be an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, and Department of Human Biological Chemistry and Genetics at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. In 1997, Whitson began a position as Adjunct Assistant Professor at Rice University in the Maybee Laboratory for Biochemical and Genetic Engineering. From 1992 to 1995, she served as project scientist for the Shuttle-Mir Program and, until her selection as an astronaut candidate in 1996, as Deputy Division Chief for the Medical Sciences division at the Johnson Space Center. In April 1996, Whitson was selected as an astronaut candidate and started training in August 1996. Upon completing the two years of training and evaluation, she was assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Operations Planning Branch, and served as the lead for the Crew Test Support Team in Russia from 1998 to 1999. In June 2003, Whitson served as the commander of the NEEMO 5 mission aboard the Aquarius underwater laboratory, living and working underwater for fourteen days. Her first space mission was in 2002, with an extended stay aboard the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 5. Her second mission launched October 10, 2007, as the first female commander of the ISS with Expedition 16. With her two long-duration stays abroad the ISS, Whitson is NASA\'s most experienced female astronaut, with just over 376 days in space. This also places her twentieth among all space flyers. On December 18, 2007, during the fourth spacewalk of Expedition 16 to inspect the S4 starboard Solar Alpha Rotary Joint (SARJ), the ground team in Mission Control informed Whitson that she had become the female astronaut with the most cumulative EVA time in NASA history, as well as the most EVAs, with her fifth EVA. Three hours and 37 minutes into the spacewalk, Whitson surpassed NASA astronaut Sunita Williams with a total time at that point of 29 hours and 18 minutes.
Spaceflights
No. Mission Position Time Duration
1 STS-111 / ISS-05 / STS-113 Flight Engineer 05.06.2002 - 07.12.2002 184d 22h 15m
2 Soyuz TMA-11 / ISS-16 ISS-CDR 10.10.2007 - 19.04.2008 191d 19h 07m
Total 376d 17h 22m
