50 Facts About Rhea Seddon

Margaret Rhea Seddon was born on November 8,1947 and is an American surgeon and retired NASA astronaut.

Rhea Seddon became an astronaut on August 9,1979, after selection as a candidate the year prior.

Rhea Seddon was a rescue helicopter physician for the early Space Shuttle flights and a support crew member for STS-6.

Rhea Seddon served as a member of NASA's Aerospace Medical Advisory Committee, as a technical assistant to the director of flight crew operations, and as a capsule communicator in the Mission Control Center.

Rhea Seddon retired from NASA in November 1997 and became Assistant Chief Medical Officer of the Vanderbilt Medical Group.

Margaret Rhea Seddon was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on November 8,1947, the first child of Edward C Seddon, a lawyer, and his wife Clayton Ransom Dann.

Rhea Seddon grew up in Murfreesboro, where she attended St Rose of Lima Catholic School.

Rhea Seddon attended Central High School in Murfreesboro, where she was a cheerleader.

Rhea Seddon entered the University of California, Berkeley, where she joined the Sigma Kappa sorority.

Rhea Seddon's 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.

Rhea Seddon received her Bachelor of Arts degree in physiology in 1970.

Rhea Seddon was awarded her Doctor of Medicine degree in 1973.

Rhea Seddon's father paid for flying lessons as a graduation gift.

Rhea Seddon did her one-year internship at the Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis.

Rhea Seddon 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.

Rhea Seddon worked in emergency departments at several hospitals in Mississippi and Tennessee, despite this being against the rules of the residency program.

Rhea Seddon wrote to NASA and was sent an application form.

Rhea Seddon found that at 62 inches in height, she was just tall enough to meet the minimum height requirement of 60 inches for mission specialists.

Rhea Seddon soon changed course again after she developed a particular interest in the nutrition of 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; Rhea Seddon received official word from George Abbey, NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations on January 16.

Rhea Seddon had a private pilot license, and logged time spent in the T-38 as co-pilot time.

Rhea Seddon was not a strong swimmer, and it took practice and exercise to develop proficiency.

SCUBA training was a prerequisite for Extravehicular Activity training, but Rhea Seddon was never considered for this because NASA did not have space suits in her small size.

Rhea Seddon was sent to the 1979 Paris Air Show to represent NASA along with Mercury Seven astronaut Deke Slayton.

Rhea Seddon figured that her astronaut job took up only fifty to sixty hours a week, which left time to practice medicine.

Rhea Seddon worked there until it closed twelve years later, then moved to Spring Branch Hospital, where she remained until she left Houston.

Rhea Seddon officially became an astronaut in August 1979, after NASA decided that one year of training was sufficient.

Rhea Seddon was placed in charge of the group, and as such could choose her assignment.

In February 1981 Seddon became engaged to fellow astronaut Robert L "Hoot" Gibson.

Rhea Seddon then resumed her role with search and rescue in preparation for the upcoming STS-2 mission.

Rhea Seddon worked in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory, where the Space Shuttle's software was tested.

Rhea Seddon's first child was born in July 1982 and was named Paul Rhea Seddon Gibson after Gibson's father.

Rhea Seddon used her surgical skills to operate a bone saw to help build homemade repair tools for the satellite.

Rhea Seddon was able to manually engage the start lever with the RMS, but the launch sequence did not commence, and the satellite was left in low Earth orbit.

Rhea Seddon accepted but had doubts about whether she could be ready in time with all her work and home commitments.

In 1988 Abbey offered her the chance of another flight in the meantime, but Rhea 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.

Rhea Seddon 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.

When Don Puddy succeeded Abbey, he considered abolishing the position, but in May 1988 Rhea Seddon was unexpectedly given the job.

Under Puddy, the job no longer entailed being a personal pilot and driver, but Rhea Seddon still worked on a variety of tasks.

Rhea Seddon helped establish criteria for access to astronauts' psychiatric records, procedures for clearing astronauts as medically fit to fly, and processes for using astronauts for medical experiments.

Rhea Seddon left the position when she had her second child, Edward Dann Gibson, who was born in March 1989.

When Rhea 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.

The mission completed 146 orbits of the Earth, and Rhea Seddon logged an additional 218 hours in space.

From September 1991 to July 1992, Rhea Seddon was a Capsule Communicator in the Mission Control Center, handling the STS-42 and STS-45 missions.

Rhea Seddon expressed a desire to Chief Astronaut Dan Brandenstein to participate in SLS-2, the follow-up mission to SLS-1.

In June 1995 Rhea Seddon had her third child, a daughter she named Emilee Louise after her sister, who had died the year before.

Rhea Seddon assisted in the preparation of cardiovascular experiments that flew aboard Columbia on the STS-90 Neurolab Spacelab flight in April 1998.

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

Rhea Seddon had begun writing her memoirs in December 1993 but set the project aside in June 1996.

Rhea Seddon was inducted into the Tennessee Aviation Hall of Fame in 2005, and the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame and Tennessee Women's Hall of Fame in 2015.