Joan Higginbotham: Soaring to New Heights in Space Exploration

By Jean A. Williams

Joan Higginbotham had her feet planted firmly on the ground. Then NASA called. They wanted to know if she was interested in becoming an astronaut. That’s the sort of happenstance way that Higginbotham’s career with NASA has gone from liftoff in the late 1980s until now, in which she stands as only the third African-American female astronaut.

Though she didn’t have stars in her eyes while growing up in Chicago, Higginbotham ultimately took up the challenges of the elite occupation. Granted, she was already in the lofty ranks of NASA when she began training to go into space. NASA had recruited her nearly a decade prior to work as an engineer on its shuttle, helping to prepare the vehicle for launch.

“I worked on the electrical systems, and I did that for nine years and launched 53 vehicles,” Higginbotham said in a phone interview from Houston, where she works at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. “I was very happy doing what I was doing. I didn’t necessarily want to do something else.”

But it was her destiny. Unlike most of us who shoot for the moon, Higginbotham would actually land among the stars. “A lot of this is kind of serendipitous for me. It was fate,” she said. “I had the background to do this, but it wasn't necessarily my goal. … I think the message to kids is to just prepare yourself. Have goals. Have dreams. But they don’t necessarily have to be set in stone. As long as you’re prepared … I think you’ll have a lot of opportunities open to you.”

Higginbotham grew up in Chicago, where she attended Whitney M. Young Magnet High School and graduated in 1982. She entered college at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale with designs on becoming an engineer. She earned a bachelor of science in electrical engineering from the university in 1987. That’s when she first showed up on NASA’s radar screen. Recruiters from NASA routinely interviewed potential future employees at SIU. However, they didn’t show up the year that Higginbotham was due to graduate. Instead, they had some transcripts and resumes forwarded to them. Higginbotham’s materials were among them. NASA’s recruiters were impressed with her academic credentials and her experience interning for companies such as IBM.

But it wasn’t necessarily a bull’s eye fit for Higginbotham, who had been planning to go to work for corporate America. She was particularly interested in continuing on with IBM. “It was a huge step for me because I lived in Chicago [where] I was born and raised,” Higginbotham said. “That’s where my friends are and family. This guy [on the phone] was asking me to move a thousand miles away for some company that had a very bad accident.”

The Space Shuttle Challenger explosion of 1986 was still fresh on everyone’s mind at the time, Higginbotham said. It played through her own thoughts as she contemplated a future with NASA. “This was the ’87 time- frame,” she said. “So I didn’t know if that was the wisest thing to do, and I didn’t really know much about NASA to be honest. I was not a space junkie or anything like that. So it took a little convincing.”

NASA flew Higginbotham down to Florida, where she made up her mind to accept their offer after seeing the launch pad. “It just looked like something out of Star Wars,” she said.

Upward Trajectory

Two weeks after graduating from SIU, Higginbotham went to work for Kennedy Space Center in Florida as a payload electrical engineer. According to her official NASA bio, she became the lead for the Orbiter Experiments (OEX) on OV-102, the Space Shuttle Columbia, within six months. During her stint at

Kennedy Space Center, she took on increasingly challenging positions, and even earned higher academic credentials while working full time. Three years after joining NASA, she went back to school and earned a Master’s of Management degree in 1992 from Florida Institute of Technology.

Later, at the behest of her then boss, Higginbotham gave consideration to applying to become an astronaut. It had never previously occurred to her to do so, she said. “I thought it was a cool job,” Higginbotham said. “I thought they were very brave, highly dedicated, motivated people. Not that I didn’t want to be one, it just didn’t occur to me. I was happy working on the shuttle.”

She applied for consideration as an astronaut in 1994 for the 1995 class. “I was one of the lucky ones that got interviewed (there were only 122 of us), and ultimately I was not one of the 15 selected,” Higginbotham said in her preflight interview posted on NASA.gov in November 2006. “After talking to some board members, they suggested I go back and get a more technical advanced degree, which is what I did. I went back to Florida Tech and got a master’s degree in space systems, reapplied for the corps in 1995 and got selected for the ’96 class.”

Higginbotham flew her first mission just about a decade later. She embarked on a 12day mission as part of the seven-member crew of STS-116 Space Shuttle Discovery on December 9-12, 2006. STS-116 flew to the International Space Station (ISS), a research facility being constructed by several nations in low Earth orbit. Higginbotham, who is a NASA Mission Specialist, was an operator of a robotic arm used to fit pieces onto ISS.

“My prime task was to be the Space Station robotic arm operator,” she said. “There’s also a robotic arm on the space shuttle. But I was one of the operators of the robotic arms on the Space Station. The piece that we carried up was called the P5 truss. The reason it’s called P5 [is] P is for the portside, or the left side, of the station and it's the fifth element on that side. So that’s why it's got the name P5. We used the arm to robotically place [P5] next to the rest of the structure. Then two of my crewmates went outside, did a spacewalk, and they physically bolted that piece that we brought up to the Space Station and did some electrical connections.”

NASA missions have evolved to be very complex, according to Higginbotham. In fact, her own mission job was a feat of daring-do. Said Higginbotham in her preflight interview: “The arm operations are really complex. We have very tight tolerances between the arm and different structures. For example, on our mission, as we’re putting the P5 truss into position, we are coming within inches of a box. That’s unheard of. You always want to stay two feet away from structure. So two feet and two inches is a big difference.”

Aside from placing parts on ISS, Higginbotham’s crew also dropped off and picked up equipment and dropped off crew member Suni Williams to ISS. They also picked up crew member Thomas Reiter, who had been on ISS for six months. The crew experienced some complications trying to coax and retract a stubborn solar panel to fold up accordion- style into its box, according to NASA. But the mission in its entirety turned out to be the highlight of Higginbotham’s career, she said.

“We had a really difficult flight and it was really, extremely rewarding that it turned out so very well,” said Higginbotham of the 5.3 million-miles roundtrip flight. “We could not have asked for a better mission. So that in itself was very satisfying and being on a crew with six other really great people.”

The Sky Is Not The Limit

Dr. Mae Jemison was the first African- American female in space, and much was made of it. Dr. Jemison flew on the Space Shuttle Endeavor on September 12, 1992. She retired from NASA in 1993. Since then, Higginbotham and Stephanie Wilson, the second black female astronaut, have fairly quietly entered the fray of space travel. Wilson, who is from Boston, also was selected by NASA to be an astronaut in 1996. She preceded Higginbotham in space by five months, flying July 4-17, 2006, on a 13day mission aboard Space Shuttle Discovery to ISS.

Higginbotham would like to fly again, though it would need to happen in the short run. NASA is planning to discontinue the shuttle as a vehicle to space and transition to a different type of vehicle known as the Orion. “At the end of 2010 we’re supposed to stop flying the shuttles and we’re supposed to get a different type of launch vehicle and eventually get back to the moon [where we haven’t been since 1972.],” Higginbotham said. “But that vehicle is not going to be ready until about 2015. That’s the projection. So we’re going to have five years where as Americans, we’re not going to have [our own] vehicle where we can fly astronauts. And so before that happens, I’d like to fly again.”

Future flights are expected to take man further into the galaxy, so mastering space exploration is key, Higginbotham suggested. “It’s really crucial that we execute these missions as well as we can,” she said in her preflight interview. “That’s the big thing: When we go back to the moon and on to Mars, I don’t think those operations are going to be any less complex than the ones that we are doing now. So it’s essential for us to master these skills now for us to continue with our exploration.”

Higginbotham, who is single with no children, said that being an astronaut is like any other job when it comes to fitting it into one’s personal life. “There has to be a balance,” Higginbotham said. “There has to be so much work and so much family.

She also said, however, that the program can be unusually demanding at times. “It may be that because we travel so much — there’s travel to Russia, Japan and Canada and all international partners — that it may be a little more stressful than a normal job.”

When she is not fulfilling duties for NASA, Higginbotham enjoys training and competing as a bodybuilder. “The working out is not the hard part,” she said in her preflight interview on NASA.gov. “It’s the eating correctly that makes you what you are once you get up on stage. So it’s the aspect of the discipline. I just really wanted to see if I could do it.”

Aside from bodybuilding, she also is a motivational speaker in her spare time. She tends to address groups looking to inspire African-American youth and young women toward math and the sciences. Becoming a military- trained pilot also can be a point of entry, she said. NASA doesn’t currently have special programs to recruit and train minority or women candidates, Higginbotham said. “They try to be diverse, but there’s no particular program that they use to reach out to the different cultures. They hope everybody applies and they try to select the best-qualified candidates.”

Aside from being academically strong, Higginbotham said that students interested in space exploration should be well rounded. “The space program now is not just NASA and the United States,” she said. “We have 15 international partners. It was really a shame because it took me until I got here to meet different people from different countries. We have a lot in common and a lot to show one another. I would really encourage students, if they have the chance, to do an exchange program or something like that because to get further in space, we’re definitely going to have to partner. I don’t think any nation, on its own, has enough resources to do this.”

Jean A. Williams is a Chicago-based writer and editor.

Photos used here courtesy of NASA or National Aeronautics and Space Administration.