Helms, Susan

Susan Helms, in full Susan Jane Helms, (born February 26, 1958, Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S.), U.S. astronaut and Air Force officer who was the first U.S. military woman in space (1993) and, with astronaut James Voss, performed the longest space walk (2001).

Helms received a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1980 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. From 1980 to 1984 she worked as a weapons separation engineer on the F-15 and F-16 aircraft at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. She received a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University in Stanford, California, in 1985 and was an assistant professor of aeronautics at the Air Force Academy from 1985 to 1987. She graduated from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California, in 1988, and, as an exchange officer, she was a test engineer on the CF-18 at the Canadian Forces Base at Cold Lake, Alberta, from 1989 to 1990. She was selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as an astronaut in 1990.

Helms made five spaceflights, the first on the STS-54 mission (January 13–19, 1993) of the space shuttle Endeavour, which launched a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite. Her second spaceflight, STS-64 (September 9–20, 1994) on Discovery, carried an experiment that used lasers to measure aerosols in Earth’s atmosphere. The STS-78 mission of the space shuttle Columbia carried a pressurized Spacelab module in which the crew performed biological and materials science experiments. Helms was the payload commander of the Spacelab module. The mission lasted nearly 17 days (June 20–July 7, 1996) and at the time was the longest space shuttle flight.

On Helms’s fourth spaceflight, STS-101 (May 19–29, 2000) on the space shuttle Atlantis, the crew made repairs to the International Space Station (ISS) to prepare it for its first crew. She returned to the ISS on the space shuttle Discovery’s STS-102 mission (launched March 8, 2001). Helms, astronaut James Voss, and cosmonaut Yury Usachyov were the ISS’s second resident crew. (Helms, Voss, and Usachyov had also flown together on STS-101.) On March 11 Helms and Voss performed a space walk that made room for a temporary storage module and that lasted 8 hours 56 minutes, making it the longest space walk ever. On July 15 Helms used the ISS’s robotic arm to remove the Quest air lock from the payload bay of the space shuttle Atlantis and attach it to the ISS. Helms returned to Earth on August 22, 2001, on the space shuttle Discovery’s STS-105 mission. On her five flights, she had spent a total of nearly 211 days in space.

Helms left NASA in 2002 to return to the Air Force, where she was named chief of the space superiority division of the Space Command in Colorado Springs. From 2004 to 2005 she was vice commander of the 45th Space Wing at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida. The next year she became a deputy director at the Air Education and Training Command at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas. In 2006 she returned to the 45th Space Wing as commander. Two years later Helms became director of plans and policy at the U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, and in 2009 she reached the rank of major general. In 2011 she was promoted to lieutenant general and became commander of both the 14th Air Force of the Air Force Space Command and the Joint Functional Component Command for Space at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. In 2013 U.S. Pres. Barack Obama nominated Helms to serve as vice commander of Space Command. However, her nomination was blocked in the U.S. Senate after it was learned that Helms had overturned a sexual-assault conviction the previous year. This setback to her career came as Congress sought to stem a growing sexual-assault crisis in the military. Helms retired from the Air Force in 2014.