Bonnie Jeanne Dunbar (born March 3, 1949) is an American engineer and retired NASA astronaut. She flew on five Space Shuttle missions between 1985 and 1998, including two dockings with the Mir space station.

A graduate of the University of Washington, where she earned a Master of Science degree in ceramics engineering, Dunbar became a senior research engineer in Rockwell International's Space Division, where she designed the equipment and manufacturing processes used to fabricate the ceramic tiles for the Space Shuttle thermal protection system. In 1978, she joined NASA as a flight controller / payload officer, and was a guidance and navigation controller for Skylab during its de-orbiting and re-entry in July 1979. She was selected as one of the nineteen astronaut candidates in NASA Astronaut Group 9 in 1980. She flew in space five times, on the STS-61-A, STS-32, STS-50, STS-71 and STS-89, and trained in Russia as a cosmonaut.

Dunbar left NASA to become the president and chief executive officer of the Museum of Flight in Seattle, where she was involved in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education for high school students. From 2013 to 2015, she led the University of Houston's STEM Center and was a faculty member in the Cullen College of Engineering. She became the John and Bea Slattery professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University in 2016, and was the Director of the Institute for Engineering Education and Innovation (IEEI) there from 2016 to 2020.

Early life and education

Bonnie Jeanne Dunbar was born in Sunnyside, Washington, on March 3, 1949, the oldest of four children of Robert and Ethel Dunbar. She has two younger brothers and a sister. Her father was a United States Marine Corps veteran who returned from World War II and purchased of land in Outlook, Washington, through a lottery for veterans in 1948. She grew up on the farm, could drive a tractor when she was about nine years old, and she helped her father repair tractors. The Future Farmers of America did not accept girls so when she was nine her father started a 4-H club so she could show cattle, which she did until she was eighteen, In 1962, the family went to the Seattle World's Fair, which showcased an imaginary ride into space, a science pavilion and the Space Needle. She worked as a waitress at the Greek Pastry Shop on The Ave and in movie theaters in the University District. James I. Mueller, the dean of the ceramics engineering department, heard that she was interested in space, and he had a grant from NASA to develop the ceramic tiles used by the Space Shuttle thermal protection system. She graduated with her Bachelor of Science degree in ceramic engineering. in 1971.

In 1975, Dunbar was invited to participate in research at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Oxfordshire, as a visiting scientist. She researched the wetting behavior of liquids on solid substrates. Before she left for England, she had already accepted a position in Downey, California, as a senior research engineer with Rockwell International's Space Division starting in October 1976. Dunbar was one of 8,079 applicants. She was selected as one of 200 finalists, and was asked to report to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, for a week of interviews and evaluations, commencing on October 17, 1977. She was not selected; instead of a call from George Abbey, the Director of Flight Operations, she received one from Carolyn Huntoon. However, Abbey offered her another job at JSC. Joe Cuzzupoli, the vice president at Rockwell, advised her to accept; her promotion prospects at Rockwell were uncertain, since she was the youngest member of her group, and if NASA did not work out she was always welcome to return to Rockwell. In July 1978, Dunbar joined NASA as a flight controller / payload officer. She was a guidance and navigation controller for Skylab and monitored its de-orbiting and re-entry in July 1979. Afterward, she returned to her payload operator role, preparing for the upcoming STS-1 Space Shuttle mission.

Astronaut

thumb|right|1987 portrait

On August 1, 1979, NASA announced another round of selections for astronaut candidates. There were 3,122 applicants. Once again Dunbar was a finalist, and she was asked to report for interviews and examinations on March 24, 1980. This time she got a call from Abbey asking if she would like to move her office down the hall (where the astronauts were).

After completing a year of astronaut candidate training, Dunbar officially became a fully-fledged NASA astronaut on August 21, 1981. Her technical assignments included assisting with the testing of the Space Shuttle onboard software at the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL). She was a member of the Flight Crew Equipment Control Board, and as such was involved in the remote manipulator system (RMS) development. She later became the chief of the Mission Development Branch, and was the Astronaut Office interface for "secondary" payloads, and the lead for the Science Support Group. The Federal Republic of Germany paid $65 million (equivalent to $ million in ) for the mission to be dedicated to German science experiments. The other NASA mission specialist assigned to the flight, Guy Bluford, was not yet available, so the payload coordinator, William B. Lenoir sent Dunbar to Germany to coordinate the arrangements for the mission. She lived there for seven months. Although the mission was conducted in English through the German Aerospace Center (DFVLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen, Dunbar was given instruction in the German language. With eight crew members, this mission was the largest to fly in space, and it was the only mission that launched with eight crew members. For the first time, payload activities were controlled from outside the United States. The crew of five astronauts and three payload specialists worked in two twelve-hours shifts, red and blue; Dunbar was in charge of the blue shift and Bluford of the red shift.

One of the largest payloads ever deployed by the Space Shuttle, the LDEF was a satellite containing 57 experiments to study the effects of long-term exposure to the Low Earth Orbit space environment. It had been launched by the STS-41-C mission on April 7, 1984, and by January 1990 its orbit had decayed to about and it was only a month or so away from re-entering the atmosphere and burning up.

The STS-32 mission lifted off from the KSC in the on January 9, 1990.

STS-50

thumb|left|Dunbar uses a Doppler to collect medical data from payload specialist [[Lawrence J. DeLucas during his diagnostic "run" in the Lower Body Negative Pressure device (LBNP). The Doppler is used to pick up high-frequency sound waves from the surface of the heart, thus producing pictures on the monitor of the American Flight Echocardiograph (AFE).]]

Planned Spacelab missions for the early 1990s included another mission for Germany (D-2) and one for Japan (J), while NASA focused on two Spacelab life sciences (SLS) missions, SLS-1 and SLS-2. It was realized that leaving materials science to the Europeans and Japanese meant that NASA had no research facilities in development of the kind that were envisaged for the Space Station Freedom. To address this, Dunbar was appointed the head of the Microgravity Materials Research Task Group. Dunbar was designated the payload commander for STS-50, the United States Microgravity Lab-1 (USML-1) mission, which was dedicated to microgravity and materials science experiments.

STS-71

thumb|right|upright|In a cosmonaut space suit in the Training Simulator Facility at the [[Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. ]]

In 1993, Dunbar became the Deputy Associate Administrator in the Office of Life and Microgravity Sciences at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. On February 4, 1994, NASA announced that Thagard and Dunbar had been selected for the prime and backup crews for a three-month flight on Mir in 1995.

In February 1994, Dunbar traveled to Star City, Russia, where she spent thirteen months in training to be a back-up Mir crew member.

STS-89

thumb|right|In keeping with Russian tradition, astronaut Dunbar (left), signs the diary of the late [[Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut. Her STS-71 crew mates Anatoly Solovyev (center) and Nikolai Budarin, look on.]]

In January 1998, Dunbar returned to Mir on the STS-89 mission in the . Launched from KSC on January 22, 1998, this was the eighth mission in which the Space Shuttle docked with the Mir space station. The Space Shuttle crew transferred more than of scientific and logistical equipment, and supplies of food and water from the Space Shuttle Endeavour to Mir. For the fifth and final time, an astronaut, in this case Andy Thomas, was delivered to Mir and one was returned, in this case David Wolf. As the payload commander, Dunbar was responsible for the twenty-three scientific and technological experiments. Endeavour touched down at KSC after 8 days, 19 hours and 47 seconds during which Endeavour had traveled in 138 orbits of the Earth.

Between October 1995 and November 1996, Dunbar worked in the Mission Operations Directorate at JSC as the assistant director for ISS readiness and Russian-American cooperation. In this role she chaired International Space Station (ISS) training readiness reviews, and facilitated Russian-American operational and training activities. On her five space flights, she had logged over 1,208 hours (more than 50 days) in space. She expanded participation in the museum's Aviation Learning Center, Aerospace Camp Experience and Challenger Learning Center. The museum's K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs were expanded to reach nearly 140,000 students per year. In this she was unsuccessful, but the museum did manage to acquire NASA's Full-Fuselage Shuttle Trainer for its Space Gallery.

From 2013 to 2015, Dunbar led the University of Houston's STEM Center and was a faculty member in the Cullen College of Engineering. She became the John and Bea Slattery professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University in 2016, and was the Director of the Institute for Engineering Education and Innovation (IEEI), a joint entity in the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and the Dwight Look College of Engineering, until 2020, when she was succeeded by Tracy Hammond.

Personal life

Dunbar married Ronald M. Sega in 1988. He was a major in the United States Air Force Reserve and an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. They later divorced.

  • American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
  • Association of Space Explorers (ASE)
  • Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA)
  • National Institute of Ceramic Engineers (NICE)
  • Sigma Xi John P. McGovern Science & Society Award (2020)
  • George R. Stibitz Computer and Communications Award (2018)
  • Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Pioneer Award(2018)
  • Elected to Astronaut Hall of Fame (2013)
  • University of Washington College of Engineering Diamond Service Award (2012)
  • NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal (1993)
  • Society of Women Engineers Resnik Challenger Medal (1993)

Notes

  • My KD Story Video featuring Bonnie Dunbar

References