Topic: Stephanie Wilson

Stephanie Diana Wilson (born September 27, 1966 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American engineer and a NASA astronaut. She flew on her first mission in space onboard the Space Shuttle mission STS-121, and is the second African American woman to go into space, after Mae Jemison.

In middle school, Wilson interviewed an Astronomy professor. In a press conference on STS-131 she remarked that this was one of her early exposures to space. Wilson graduated from Taconic High School, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1984. She attended Harvard University, receiving a bachelor of science degree in engineering science in 1988. Wilson earned a master of science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas, in 1992

Wilson worked for two years for the former Martin Marietta Astronautics Group in Denver, Colorado. As a Loads and Dynamics engineer for the Titan IV rocket, Wilson was responsible for performing coupled loads analyses for the launch vehicle and payloads during flight events. Wilson left Martin Marietta in 1990 to attend graduate school at the University of Texas. Her research focused on the control and modeling of large, flexible space structures. Following the completion of her graduate work, she began working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in 1992. As a member of the Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem for the Galileo spacecraft, Wilson was responsible for assessing attitude controller performance, science platform pointing accuracy, antenna pointing accuracy and spin rate accuracy. She worked in the areas of sequence development and testing as well. While at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Wilson also supported the Interferometery Technology Program as a member of the Integrated Modeling Team, which was responsible for finite element modeling, controller design, and software development.