Margaret Rhea Seddon
Born	(1947-11-08) November 8, 1947 (age 74) Murfreesboro, Tennessee, U.S.
Status	Retired
Occupation	Surgeon
Awards	NASA Space Flight Medal (1985, 1991, 1993), NASA Exceptional Service Medal (1988, 1992), NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal (1994)
Space career
NASA Astronaut
Time in space	30d 02h 21m
Selection	1978 NASA Group
Missions	STS-51-D, STS-40, STS-58
Mission insignia

Margaret Rhea Seddon (born November 8, 1947) is an American surgeon and retired NASA astronaut. After being selected as part of the first group of astronauts to include women in 1978, she flew on three Space Shuttle flights: as mission specialist on STS-51-D and STS-40, and as payload commander for STS-58, accumulating over 722 hours in space.

A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, Seddon was awarded her doctor of medicine (MD) degree in 1973. She did her internship at the Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis three years residency at the University of Tennessee hospitals in Memphis, where she was the only woman in the General Surgery Residency Program. Before, during and after her career in the astronaut program, she has been active in emergency departments in Tennessee, Mississippi and Texas.

Selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA in January 1978, Seddon became an astronaut in August 1979. During the STS-51-D mission in April 1985, she used her surgical skills to operate a bone saw, which she used to build homemade repair tools for the U. S. Navy Syncom IV-3 satellite.The STS-40 Spacelab Life Sciences (SLS-1) mission in June 1991 was a dedicated space and life sciences mission, during which the crew performed experiments which explored how humans, animals and cells respond to microgravity and re-adapt to Earth's gravity on return. Other payloads included experiments designed to investigate materials science, plant biology and cosmic radiation, and tests of hardware proposed for the Space Station Freedom Health Maintenance Facility. For the STS-58 Spacelab Life Sciences-2 (SLS-2) mission, Seddon was the Payload Commander. During the fourteen-day flight in October and November 1993 the crew performed neurovestibular, cardiovascular, cardiopulmonary, metabolic, and musculoskeletal medical experiments on themselves and 48 rats, expanding our knowledge of human and animal physiology both on earth and in space flight. In addition, the crew performed ten engineering tests aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia and nine Extended Duration Orbiter Medical Project experiments.^[1]

Her work at NASA also included development of the Space Shuttle Orbiter and payload software, the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory, Flight Data File, Shuttle medical kit and checklists for launch and landing. She was a rescue helicopter physician for the early Shuttle flights and support crew member for STS-6. She served on NASA's Aerospace Medical Advisory Committee, as Technical Assistant to the Director of Flight Crew Operations, and as a Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM) in the Mission Control Center. In September 1996, she was detailed by NASA to Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville, Tennessee. She assisted in the preparation of cardiovascular experiments that flew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia on the Neurolab Spacelab flight in April 1998. Seddon retired from NASA in November 1997. She subsequently became Chief Medical Officer of the Vanderbilt Medical Group.^[1]

Early life and education[edit]

Margaret Rhea Seddon was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on November 8, 1947,^[1] the first child of Edward C. Seddon,^[2] a lawyer, and his wife Clayton Ransom née Dann. Seddon was named after her maternal grandmother. She had a younger sister, Louise.^[3] She grew up in Murfreesboro, where she attended St Rose of Lima Catholic School. The nuns at St Rose did not teach science until the Sputnik crisis made it a national priority. A science teacher was then recruited, and Seddon began studying science in the seventh grade. In 1960, she wrote a school report on what would happen to people who ventured into space.^[4] She then attended Central High School in Murfreesboro,^[5] where she was a cheerleader.^[3] She graduated in 1965.^[5]

A friend of the family, Lois Kennedy, was a physician—Seddon worked in her office one summer—and inspired her to pursue a career in medicine. Another friend of the family, Florence Ridley, a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, recommended some universities in California with good life sciences programs.^[6] Seddon entered the University of California, Berkeley, where she joined the Sigma Kappa sorority.^[7] Her father had been on the board of directors of Rutherford County Hospital, which was opening a new coronary care unit in the summer after her freshman year, and he arranged for Seddon to spend her summer there as an aide. However, the new center's opening was delayed, and she spent the summer working in the surgical unit, where she decided to become a surgeon.^[6] She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in physiology in 1970.^[2]

During her senior year at Berkeley, Seddon was accepted by the University of Tennessee College of Medicine. When she matriculated in 1970, there were only six women in the class of more than 100 medical students.^[8] She was awarded her Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree in 1973.^[2] Her father paid for flying lessons as a graduation gift.^[9] Seddon did her internship at the Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis.^[10] Women were not permitted in the surgery doctors' lounge there, so she had to wait between cases in a folding chair in the nurses' bathroom.^[9] She then did three years of residency at the University of Tennessee hospitals in Memphis, where she was the only woman in the General Surgery Residency Program.^[10] She also served in emergency departments at several hospitals in Mississippi and Tennessee, despite this being against the rules of the residency program.^[11]

NASA career[edit]

Portrait from 1978

Selection[edit]

On July 8, 1976, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) issued a call for applications for pilot and mission specialist candidates. For the first time, women were encouraged to apply.^[12] A colleague, Russ Greer, a neurosurgery resident who had worked at NASA and was aware that Seddon had expressed an interest in becoming an astronaut, informed Seddon of the selection process that was underway, and she decided to apply. She wrote to NASA and was sent an application form. She found that she was 5.1 centimeters (2 in) above the 150 centimeters (60 in) minimum height. The application required copies of her birth certificate and academic transcripts, and three references. For these she chose James Pate, the head of surgery at the hospital; Jose Guma, her flying instructor; and Jim Arnhart, the administrator of Rutherford Hospital.^[13]

Seddon was contacted by Jay F. Honeycutt from NASA and asked to come to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) for a week of interviews and physical examinations commencing on August 29, 1977.^[14] She flew down to Houston International Airport and took a Metro Airlines flight to Clear Lake, Texas, where the JSC was located.^[15] Afterwards, she returned to the Memphis Veterans Administration Hospital, where she commenced a residency in plastic surgery. She soon changed course again after she developed a particular interest in the nutrition in surgery patients. In January 1978, journalist Jules Bergman asked if he could interview her on Good Morning America, and he revealed that she had been selected for astronaut training. On January 16, she received official word from George Abbey, NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations.^[16] The names of the 35 successful candidates in NASA Astronaut Group 8 were publicly released later that day.^[2]

Training[edit]

Practising CPR during a Zero G training flight

New selections were considered astronaut candidates rather than fully-fledged astronauts until they finished their training and evaluation, which was expected to take two years.^[12] Pilot training was not required of mission specialist candidates, but they were given training in how to handle emergencies while flying in the back seat of NASA's Northrop T-38 Talon jets.^[17] Seddon had a private pilot licence, and logged time spent in the T-38 as co-pilot time. Due to her small size, she had trouble climbing into the aircraft and with ill-fitting parachute harness.^[18] A particularly difficult part of the curriculum for Seddon was SCUBA training, which was conducted in the pool at the Clear Lake Recreational Center. She was not a strong swimmer, and it took practice and exercise to develop proficiency. SCUBA training was a prerequisite for Extravehicular Activity (EVA) training, but Seddon was never considered for this because NASA did not produce space suits in her small size.^[19] She was sent to the 1979 Paris Air Show with Mercury Seven astronaut Deke Slayton.^[20]

As an astronaut candidate, Seddon drew a civil service salary of about US$22,000 (equivalent to $91,000 in 2021), which was more than she made as a surgical resident. Nonetheless, when she went to buy a town house she was told that her income was $3,000 short of what was required, even with her father putting up the deposit. United Savings and Loan refused to lend her the money without her father's co-signature, which was obtained. She also bought a new Chevrolet Corvette. She figured that her astronaut job only took up 50 to 60 hours a week, which left time to practice medicine. This required six months to obtain a Texas medical license and secure permission from NASA Headquarters, and another loan from her father to cover the license fee and malpractice insurance. After several months serving in emergency rooms of various hospitals, she met Diana Fire, who worked at Sam Houston Memorial Hospital, and accepted an offer to work in the emergency room there on weekends. Seddon worked there until it closed twelve years later, then moved to Spring Branch Hospital, where she remained until she left Houston.^[21]

Seddon and Gibson with newborn baby Paul

Seddon officially became an astronaut in August 1979, NASA having decided that one year of training was sufficient.^[20] As with earlier astronaut groups, each astronaut candidate was assigned a particular specialization; Seddon's the food system.^[21] For STS-1 the first orbital spaceflight of NASA's Space Shuttle program and the inaugural flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia, Abbey decided that the five MDs of the 1978 and 1980 astronaut groups—Norman Thagard, Anna Fisher and Seddon from the 1978 group, and Bill Fisher and Jim Bagian from the 1980 group—would be assigned to the search and rescue helicopters supporting the flight. These would be required if the Space Shuttle crashed or the astronauts had to eject. Seddon was placed in charge of the group, and as such could choose her own assignment. She therefore decided to join the group at Cape Canaveral. In the event, the mission went well, and search and rescue was not required.^[22] In February 1981, Seddon became engaged to fellow astronaut Robert L. "Hoot" Gibson. They were married on May 30 in a ceremony at the First United Methodist Church in Murfreesboro, followed by a reception at the Stones Rover Country Club. A second reception was held in Houston, followed by a honeymoon in Hawaii. Seddon (who retained her maiden name) then resumed her role with search and rescue in preparation for the upcoming STS-2 mission. She also worked in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory, where the Space Shuttle's software was tested.^[23][24]

Seddon's first child was born in July 1982, and was named Paul Seddon Gibson after Gibson's father. Gibson already had one child, a daughter called Julie, from his first marriage. While many astronauts had children, this was the first child born to an astronaut couple. The baby suffered from a serious condition arising from inhaling meconium, and was rushed by helicopter from Clear Lake Hospital to Houston's Hermann Hospital, where he soon responded to treatment.^[25][26]

Space flights[edit]

Seddon builds a homemade repair tool during the STS-51-D mission in 1985

In August 1983, Abbey offered Seddon a flight assignment on STS-41-E, which she accepted. Had the mission been flown as planned in August 1984, she would have become the third American woman to fly in space, but the mission, which was renumbered STS-41-F, was delayed and then canceled.^[27] The crew were kept together and assigned to STS-51-E, but it too was delayed and canceled. Finally, they were assigned to STS-51-D. With each change of mission came different payloads requiring different training.^[28] The mission was scheduled to lift off on March 19, 1985, but suffered a series of delays. STS-51-D lifted in the Discovery from the Kennedy Space Center on April 12, 1985. The crew deployed the ANIK-C satellite for Telesat of Canada, and Syncom IV-3 for the U.S. Navy. A malfunction in the Syncom spacecraft resulted in the first unscheduled spacewalk, rendezvous and proximity operations for the Space Shuttle in an attempt to activate the satellite using the Remote Manipulator System.^[1][29] Seddon logged 168 hours in 109 Earth orbits, and she used her surgical skills to operate a bone saw to help build homemade repair tools for the satellite.^[30] After the flight she presented a banner she had flown with to Central Middle School (as Central High School now was), and met President Ronald Reagan at the Oval Office in Washington, DC.^[28]

Even before the STS-51-D mission was flown, Abbey offered Seddon a chance to fly on the Spacelab Life Sciences (SLS-1) mission, which was scheduled to lift on aboard the Columbia in late January 1986. She accepted, but had doubts about whether she could be ready in time with all her work and home commitments. As it turned out, there was ample time due to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.^[31] Seddon did not attend any of the astronaut funeral services (the family was represented by Gibson), but the widow of Mike Smith asked that he be buried in his NASA flight suit. It fell to Seddon to retrieve the flight suit from Hangar L at the Kennedy Space Center and scrub it clean in an industrial style sink there.^[32]

While she waited for her Spacelab Life Sciences mission to be scheduled, she sought out a refresher program in emergency medicine. Such programs were uncommon at the time, but she found one at Denver General Hospital. The course cost several thousand dollars, which she could not afford, but she wrote to Vincent Markovchik, the head of the program, and he agreed to waive the fee.^[33] In 1988 Abbey offered her the chance of another flight in the meantime, but Seddon declined, as she was hoping to have another child, and felt that the SLS-1 mission needed someone to watch over it, even if its launch was years in the future.^[34] Seddon also began to think about acquiring some managerial experience, and went to see Carolyn Huntoon, the head of the Space and Life Sciences Directorate at JSC, about a secondment to her area. Huntoon agreed to take Seddon on as an assistant in the spring of 1988. However, while Abbey was Director of Flight Operations, he had an astronaut technical assistant, known in the NASA Astronaut Corps as the "Bubba". The main job of the technical assistant was acting as Abbey's personal pilot, but the technical assistant also did many odd jobs on Abbey's behalf. When Don Puddy succeeded Abbey, he considered abolishing the position, but in May 1988 Seddon was unexpectedly given the job. She also fell pregnant again.^[35] Her second child, Edward Dann Gibson (named after her father) was born in March 1989.^[36]

Setting up the exerciser expelled gas analyzer on the STS-58 mission

When Seddon returned from maternity leave in July 1989, the launch of SLS-1 had been added to the flight schedule as STS-40, with a launch date of May 1990. By this time the crew had been training a few hours per month since January 1986, and the payload have been changed several times. It was so overbooked with experiments that the mission was split into two: SLS-1 and SLS-2. One crew member, Bob Phillips, was grounded with a minor medical condition and was replaced by Millie Hughes-Fulford. Hopes that training could now proceed uninterrupted were soon dashed; Seddon was called upon to participate in the selection of NASA Astronaut Group 13 (who became known as the "Hairballs").^[37][38]

The STS-40 SLS-1 mission finally lifted of from the KSC in the Space Shuttle Columbia on June 5, 1991. During the nine-day mission the crew performed experiments which explored how humans, animals and cells respond to microgravity and re-adapt to Earth's gravity on return. Other payloads included experiments designed to investigate materials science, plant biology and cosmic radiation, and tests of hardware proposed for the Space Station Freedom Health Maintenance Facility. The mission completed in 146 orbits of the Earth, and logged her an additional 218 hours in space.^[1][39]

From September 1991 to July 1992, Seddon was a Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM) in the Mission Control Center. She expressed a desire to participate in SLS-2, the follow-up mission to SLS-1. This desire was readily accommodated, as life science missions were not popular. In October 1991, she was designated the payload commander for the STS-58 / SLS-2 mission. This was a new position created to provide a single point of contact for the science crew.^[40] During training for the mission, she broke four bones in her foot while sliding down a Space Shuttle escape slide during a practice for an emergency evacuation.^[41] This was diagnosed as a Lisfranc fracture. Surgery was required to insert screws to realign the bones, and she had to spend six weeks in a cast and another six in a walking boot. This did not leave much time before the launch date, but there was no move to replace her, and the flight was delayed a few months for other reasons.^[42]

Seddon spins the Spacelab Life Sciences rotating chair as Payload Specialist Martin Fettman serves as a test subject on the STS-58 mission

SLS-2 involved animal testing, with mice being dissected in space. At this time NASA management began to feel pressure from animal rights groups, and NASA Administrator Dan Goldin asked for a report into the animal experiments. Seddon and Payload Specialist Martin J. Fettman prepared a report on how the research could be conducted without killing animals, which amounted to removing body parts without killing them. Seddon and Fettman felt that this was unethical. Their recommendations were ignored; NASA management ordered the Director of Flight Crew Operations, David Leestma, to proceed with this alternate. He took no action, and the mission was flown as originally planned.^[43]

STS-58 with SLS-2 lifted off in the Space Shuttle Columbia on October 18, 1993. During the fourteen-day flight the seven-person crew performed neurovestibular, cardiovascular, cardiopulmonary, metabolic, and musculoskeletal medical experiments on themselves and 48 rats, expanding our knowledge of human and animal physiology both on earth and in space flight. In addition, the crew performed ten engineering tests aboard the Orbiter Columbia and nine Extended Duration Orbiter Medical Project experiments. The mission was accomplished in 225 orbits of the Earth in over 336 hours.^[1][44]

Delivering a lecture in 2015

In June 1995, Seddon had her third child, a daughter she named Emilee Louise after her sister, who had died the year before.^[45] Seddon was Assistant to the Director of Flight Crew Operations for Shuttle/Mir Payloads, which involved travel to Russia.^[46] In September 1996, she was detailed by NASA to Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville, Tennessee. She assisted in the preparation of cardiovascular experiments that flew aboard Columbia on the STS-90 Neurolab Spacelab flight in April 1998.^[1][47]

Later life[edit]

Seddon retired from NASA in November 1997,^[1] and for the next eleven years she was the assistant Chief Medical Officer of the Vanderbilt Medical Group in Nashville, Tennessee.^[1][48]

Awards and honors[edit]

Seddon's awards from NASA included the NASA Space Flight Medal in 1985, 1991 and 1993; the NASA Exceptional Service Medal in 1988 and 1992, and the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal in 1994.^[49] She was inducted into the Tennessee Aviation Hall of Fame in 2005,^[50]the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2015,^[51][52] and the Tennessee Women’s Hall of Fame in 2015.^[53] The following year she was awarded the National Football Foundation Nashville Chapter’s Fred Russell Distinguished American Award in 2016,^[51] and the Independent Book Publishers Association Ben Franklin Gold Award for Best Autobiography/Memoir for her memoir, Go For Orbit.^[54] She also received thee Athena International Leadership Award (Rutherford County) and a University of Tennessee Centennial Top 100 Alumni Award, and was a co-recipient of the Great American leadership award along with Gibson.^[51] She is also a Daughter of the American Revolution.^[55]

See also[edit]

• List of female spacefarers

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

• Seddon, Rhea (2015). Go For Orbit: One of America's First Women Astronauts Finds Her Space. Murfreesboro, Tennessee: Your Space Press. ISBN 978-0-9962178-1-1. OCLC 921147949.

External links[edit]

Rhea Seddon - Rats, Folks, and Jellyfish: Studying Life in Space