Stephanie Wilson

American astronaut and engineer (born 1966)
the American theatre director, arts advocate, and non profit fundraiser

Stephanie Diana Wilson (born September 27, 1966) is an American engineer and a NASA astronaut. She flew to space onboard three Space Shuttle missions, and is the second African American woman to go into space, after Mae Jemison. as of 2022, her 42 days in space are the second most of any female African American astronaut, having been surpassed by Jessica Watkins in 2022, however in 2024 she was assigned to the Crew 9 mission during which she should retake the lead.

Stephanie Wilson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 27, 1966. About a year later, her parents, Eugene and Barbara Wilson, decided to move to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Eugene, a native of Nesmith, South Carolina, used his electronics training from his time in the Navy to get himself a degree from Northeastern University and a long career in electrical engineering for Raytheon, Sprague Electric, and Lockheed Martin, while Barbara, from Talbot County, Georgia, worked as a production assistant for Lockheed Martin. For a career awareness class in middle school, Wilson was assigned to interview someone in a field that interested her. Since she liked to look up at the sky, she interviewed Williams College astronomer Jay Pasachoff, She was the Chief Marshal for the 362nd Harvard Commencement on May 30, 2013.

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, Wilson 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.

STS 121 (July 4–17, 2006), was a return to flight test mission and assembly flight to the International Space Station. During the 13 day flight, the crew of Space Shuttle Discovery tested new equipment and procedures that increase the safety of space shuttles, repaired a rail car on the International Space Station and produced never before seen, high resolution images of the Shuttle during and after its July 4 launch. Wilson supported robotic arm operations for vehicle inspection, Multi Purpose Logistics Module installation and EVAs and was responsible for the transfer of more than 28,000 pounds of supplies and equipment to the ISS. The crew also performed maintenance on the space station and delivered a new Expedition 13 crew member to the station. The mission was accomplished in 306 hours, 37 minutes and 54 seconds.

STS 120 (October 23 – November 7, 2007) was a 6.25 million mile Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS). It delivered the Harmony module, and reconfigured the P6 truss in preparation for future assembly missions. STS 120 carried a new Expedition 16 crew member, Daniel Tani, and returned Expedition 15 and Expedition 16 crewmember Clayton Anderson. The crew conducted four spacewalks and performed a previously untested repair method on the station's solar array. The mission was accomplished in 15 days, 2 hours, 23 minutes, during 238 orbits.

STS 131 (April 5–20, 2010) was a resupply mission to the International Space Station. Space Shuttle Discovery was launched pre dawn from Kennedy Space Center. Once docked to the space station, the crew delivered more than 27,000 pounds of hardware, supplies, experiments and equipment, including a tank full of ammonia coolant that required three spacewalks and robotics to install, new crew sleeping quarters, a window observation facility and a freezer for experiments. During the mission, Wilson was responsible for robotics for spacewalking support using the space station robotic arm and for robotic removal of the "Leonardo" Multi Purpose Logistics Module from the payload bay of Discovery. For the return to Earth, Wilson robotically installed Leonardo, which was packed with more than 6,000 pounds of hardware, science results and used supplies, inside Discovery's payload bay. The STS 131 mission was accomplished in 15 days, 2 hours, 47 minutes and 10 seconds and traveled 6,232,235 statute miles in 238 orbits.

Artemis (2017–Present) is the mission NASA announced in 2020 to return to the Moon, scheduled for 2024. Wilson has been selected as one of eighteen astronauts comprising the Artemis team. This mission will send the first woman and next man to walk on the lunar surface.

Wilson is a Christian. She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Her hobbies include skiing and stamp collecting. She is married to Julius McCurdy.