Lisa Marie Caputo is an American aeronautical engineer, former United States Navy captain, naval flight officer and test pilot. She was selected by NASA with NASA Astronaut Group 16 in 1996 and qualified as a mission specialist in robotics. Nowak flew in space aboard Space Shuttle Discovery during the STS-121 mission in July 2006. On February 5, 2007, Nowak was arrested in Orlando, Florida, after she accosted and pepper sprayed U. S. Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman, who was also romantically involved with astronaut William Oefelein.
About Lisa Nowak in brief
Lisa Marie Caputo is an American aeronautical engineer, former United States Navy captain, naval flight officer and test pilot. She was selected by NASA with NASA Astronaut Group 16 in 1996 and qualified as a mission specialist in robotics. Nowak flew in space aboard Space Shuttle Discovery during the STS-121 mission in July 2006. On February 5, 2007, Nowak was arrested in Orlando, Florida, after she accosted and pepper sprayed U. S. Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman, who was also romantically involved with astronaut William Oefelein. Her assignment to the space agency as an astronaut was terminated by NASA effective March 8, 2007. On November 10, 2009, she agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to charges of felony burglary of a car and misdemeanor battery. She remained a Navy captain until August 2010, when a naval board of inquiry voted unanimously to reduce her in rank to commander and to discharge her from the Navy under other than honorable conditions after 25 years of service. Caputo and her two younger sisters, Andrea and Marisa, grew up in Rockville, Maryland. In 1969, she watched the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and became interested in the space program. While growing up, she followed the Space Shuttle program, particularly the introduction of female astronauts in 1978, and paid frequent visits to the National Air and Space Museum. In the January of her junior year of high school, she told her mother that she was going to become an astronaut.
In 1985, Caputo received orders to report to the Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida for flight training for women. In December 1985, she said, “What impressed me was the whole idea that everybody was so excited into what they were doing and that each of their parts was so important” She later said that the idea of women in flight training was so new to her that she didn’t know what to make of it. She graduated from the United States Naval Academy in May 1985 with a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering, and commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Navy. For her first assignment, she chose to work as an aerospace engineer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where she worked as an engineer at its branch at Eton Air Force Base near Houston. In May 1987, she was named Student Athlete of the Year, and graduated as co-valedictorian. She flew the EA-7L Corsair and ERA-3B Skywarrior in the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and in 1993, was selected to attend the Naval Test Pilot School at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, and flew in the FA-18 Hornet and EA-6B Prowler. During her Navy career she logged over 1,500 hours in over 30 different aircraft, and was awarded the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal, and the Navy Achievement Medal.
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