Susan Helms

Did You Know?

• Helms performed a world-record 8 hour and 56 minute spacewalk on March 11, 2001, a record that stood until December 17, 2024.
• She was a member of the second crew to inhabit the International Space Station, Expedition 2, and spent 163 days aboard the station.
• She was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2013 to become vice commander of the Air Force Space Command, but the nomination was withdrawn after a Senator placed a permanent hold on it.
• Helms has flown in 30 different types of U.S. and Canadian military aircraft as a flight test engineer.

Military career

Helms graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1980 with a bachelor of science in aeronautical engineering and received her commission. She was assigned to Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, as an F-16 weapons separation engineer with the Air Force Armament Laboratory. In 1982, she became the lead engineer for F-15 weapons separation. After being selected for graduate school in 1984, she earned a Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University in 1985 and then served as an assistant professor of aeronautics at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

In 1987, she attended the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California, completing a year of training as a flight test engineer. She was then assigned as a USAF Exchange Officer to the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment at Canadian Forces Base Cold Lake in Alberta, Canada, where she worked as a flight test engineer and project officer on the CF-18 aircraft. She was managing the development of a CF-18 flight control system simulation for the Canadian Forces when selected for the astronaut program.

After a 12-year NASA career that included 211 days in space, Helms returned to the U.S. Air Force in July 2002 to take a position at HQ USAF Space Command. She served as division chief of the Space Superiority Division of the Requirements Directorate of Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and later as vice commander of the 45th Space Wing at Patrick Air Force Base near Cape Canaveral, Florida. She then served as deputy director of operations (Technical Training) for Air Education and Training Command at Randolph Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas.

Helms served on the Return To Flight task group after the Columbia accident. She was promoted to brigadier general in June 2006 and became commander of the 45th Space Wing on the same day. Promoted to major general in August 2009, she served as director of plans and policy, U.S. Strategic Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, responsible for national security policy, military strategy, space and weapons employment concepts, joint doctrine, the nation's strategic war plan, strategic support plans, and contingency planning for the global strike mission.

Spaceflight experience

Selected by NASA in January 1990, Susan Helms officially became an astronaut in July 1991. Over the course of her career, she flew on five space missions: STS-54 in 1993, STS-64 in 1994, STS-78 in 1996, STS-101 in 2000, and served as part of the International Space Station’s Expedition 2 crew in 2001. In total, she spent 5,064 hours in space, including a single spacewalk that lasted 8 hours and 56 minutes—a world record at the time.

Her first flight was STS-54 aboard Endeavour, which launched on January 13, 1993, and lasted 5 days, 23 hours, 38 minutes, and 17 seconds. The main job was deploying a $200-million NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-F). The crew also operated a diffuse X-ray spectrometer in the payload bay, collecting more than 80,000 seconds of X-ray data to help scientists understand the Milky Way’s origins. They demonstrated physics using everyday toys for a live audience of elementary school students across the U.S. A successful spacewalk provided lessons that later helped with assembling the International Space Station.

On STS-64, aboard Discovery from September 9 to 20, 1994, Helms served as flight engineer and primary operator of the shuttle’s robotic arm. The mission’s main goal was testing the Lidar in Space Technology Experiment (LITE), which gathered data on Earth’s troposphere and stratosphere. Other tasks included deploying and retrieving the SPARTAN-201 satellite to study the solar corona, testing a new spacewalk maneuvering device, and using the Shuttle Plume Impingement Flight Experiment (SPIFEX) to measure thruster effects for future docking maneuvers. This mission lasted 10 days, 22 hours, and 51 minutes.

STS-78, aboard Columbia from June 20 to July 7, 1996, was the longest shuttle mission at the time, lasting 16 days, 21 hours, and 48 minutes. Helms was payload commander and flight engineer. The mission involved experiments from ten nations and five space agencies, and was the first to combine a full microgravity research program with a comprehensive life sciences study. This Life and Microgravity Spacelab mission served as a template for later work on the International Space Station.