Melroy named 2nd female commander

Veteran shuttle pilot Pamela Melroy next year will become only the second woman to command a U.S. space mission. She'll lead an astronaut crew that will complete the core of the U.S. segment of the International Space Station.

Melroy, 44, and five other astronauts will launch late next summer aboard shuttle Atlantis. Their cargo: the Italian-built Node 2 module, which ultimately will serve as a gateway to European and Japanese science laboratories at the outpost.

NASA astronaut George Zamka will serve as the pilot of the mission. The flight's mission specialists will be Scott Parazynski, Douglas Wheelock, Michael Foreman and Paolo Nespoli, a European Space Agency astronaut from Italy.

Zamka, Wheelock, Foreman and Nespoli will be making their first spaceflights.
Designated STS-120, the mission will be Melroy's third shuttle flight. She piloted shuttle missions to the station in 2000 and 2002.

Former NASA astronaut Eileen Collins became the first woman to command a U.S. space mission in July 1999. She also commanded the agency's first post-Columbia test flight last July.

The only other woman to pilot a shuttle mission: former NASA astronaut Susan Still Kilrain. She piloted two shuttle flights in 1997.

Image note: Click to enlarge this NASA photo of Melroy at a NASA pool at Johnson Space Center where astronauts train for emergency escapes from shuttle orbiters.