Millie Hughes-Fulford | |
---|---|
Born | Millie Elizabeth Hughes[1] December 21, 1945 Mineral Wells, Texas, U.S. |
Died | February 2, 2021 Mill Valley, California, U.S. | (aged 75)
Alma mater | Tarleton State University, B.S., 1968 Texas Woman's University, Ph.D., 1972 |
Occupation | Chemist |
Space career | |
NASA payload specialist | |
Time in space | 9 days, 2 hours, 14 minutes |
Selection | January 1983 |
Missions | STS-40 |
Mission insignia |
Millie Elizabeth Hughes-Fulford (née Hughes; December 21, 1945 – February 2, 2021) was an American medical investigator, molecular biologist, and NASA payload specialist who flew aboard the NASA Space Shuttle Columbia in June 1991.[2]
YouTube Encyclopedic
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Millie Hughes-Fulford: Scientist in Space
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Millie Hughes-Fulford: Scientist in Space - KQED QUEST
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Space Station Live: Studying the Immune System In Space
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Space Station Live: A Call to Arms for T-cells
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Astronauts and immunology.m4v
Transcription
Narrator: ASPIRING ASTRONAUTS DREAM OF FLOATING AROUND IN SPACE UNTETHERED. BUT SCIENTISTS HAVE FOUND THAT THE HUMAN BODY ACTUALLY NEEDS THE PULL OF THE EARTH'S GRAVITY IN ORDER TO STAY HEALTHY. Hughes-Fulford: WE HAVE EVOLVED IN A ONE-GRAVITY ENVIRONMENT. SO IT'S NOT SURPRISING THAT A FEW OF THE SYSTEMS THAT WE HAVE DEVELOPED REQUIRE GRAVITY FOR NORMAL FUNCTION. Man: ROGER. HOW DOES IT LOOK? Narrator: THIS IS A REALITY THAT ASTRONAUTS HAVE BEEN EXPERIENCING SINCE THE INCEPTION OF NASA's LANDMARK APOLLO SPACE PROGRAM IN THE 1960s. BEHIND THE SCENES, SEVERAL ASTRONAUTS PAID A PHYSICAL PRICE FOR THE APOLLO-ERA EXPLOITS. Hughes-Fulford: 15 OF THE 29 ASTRONAUTS EITHER BECAME ILL DURING THE FLIGHT OR UPON RETURN. AND THAT WAS UNUSUAL BECAUSE THESE ARE REALLY HEALTHY PEOPLE. HAISE, ON APOLLO 13, GOT VERY, VERY ILL. HE HAD A RESPIRATORY INFECTION. SOME JUST HAD WHAT SEEMED TO BE HEAD COLDS. Narrator: FAST-FORWARD 20 YEARS TO 1991. SAN FRANCISCO-BASED MOLECULAR BIOLOGIST MILLIE HUGHES-FULFORD BECAME THE FIRST WOMAN TO TRAVEL INTO SPACE AS A WORKING SCIENTIST. Hughes-Fulford: IT WAS UNBELIEVABLY INCREDIBLE BECAUSE IT WAS A DREAM, AND NOT EVERYONE GETS A DREAM. Narrator: SHE WAS PART OF NASA's FIRST MISSION DEDICATED EXCLUSIVELY TO THE MEDICAL SCIENCES. HER JOB WAS TO CARRY OUT EXPERIMENTS FOR SCIENTISTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD. IN ONE EXPERIMENT WITH RATS, SHE INVESTIGATED WHY SPACE TRAVELERS BECOME SICK. THE RESEARCH FOCUSED ON IMMUNE CELLS CALLED T CELLS. Hughes-Fulford: IF YOU THINK OF AN ARMY, AND THE ARMY BEING THE IMMUNE SYSTEM, THE GENERAL WOULD BE THE T CELL. IT GETS THE MESSAGE, "OH, WE HAVE AN INVADER." AND IT SENDS OUT SIGNALS TO MAKE ANTIBODIES, TO START EATING UP ALL THOSE EXTRA, LITTLE BACTERIA. IT'S THE GENERAL. IT REGULATES THE ENTIRE IMMUNE SYSTEM. Narrator: THE RESEARCH FOUND THAT, IN SPACE, T CELLS DON'T SEND OUT THE SIGNALS THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO. AS A RESULT, SPACE TRAVELERS CAN BECOME SICK. Hughes-Fulford: NOW WE BELIEVE IT'S GRAVITY THAT'S CAUSING THE CHANGES AND THE T CELL NEEDING GRAVITY IN ORDER TO FUNCTION PROPERLY. Man: WE'D LIKE TO SHOW YOU WHAT WE DID ON THIS MISSION. Narrator: WHEN HUGHES-FULFORD RETURNED FROM HER NINE-DAY MISSION, SHE BECAME ONE OF A SMALL GROUP OF SCIENTISTS WHO REGULARLY SEND EXPERIMENTS TO SPACE. Hughes-Fulford: OKAY. SO, WE'RE READY. Narrator: HER TEAM AT THE SAN FRANCISCO VA MEDICAL CENTER IS PREPARING TO SEND HER NINTH EXPERIMENT INTO SPACE IN 2014. Hughes-Fulford: YOU HAVE TO BE PATIENT, YOU HAVE TO PLAN AHEAD. THERE'S ZERO ERROR BECAUSE YOU GET ONE SHOT. Narrator: WITH THIS EXPERIMENT, HUGHES-FULFORD HOPES TO UNDERSTAND WHICH GENES IN OUR IMMUNE SYSTEM MALFUNCTION IN SPACE AND WHAT CAUSES THEM TO FAIL. Hughes-Fulford: THE GENE CHIP WE'RE USING RIGHT NOW WILL GIVE US ALL THE ANSWERS WE NEED. WE'RE ABLE TO LOOK AT EVERY GENE THAT'S TURNED ON, EVERY GENE THAT'S TURNED OFF, AND WE FIND OUT WHICH PATHWAYS ARE NOT WORKING IN SPACE FLIGHT. Narrator: HER LAB MEMBERS EXTRACT T CELLS FROM DONATED HUMAN BLOOD, SIMULATE AN INFECTION, THEN PLACE THEM IN A MACHINE THAT MIMICS A ZERO-GRAVITY ENVIRONMENT. Meissler: SPINNING THE CELLS, FROM A CELL'S POINT OF VIEW, ELIMINATES THE GRAVITY VECTOR THAT WE EXPERIENCE ON EARTH. Narrator: THE EXPERIMENT'S RESULTS COULD HAVE FAR-REACHING IMPLICATIONS, BOTH ON EARTH AND IN SPACE. IF HUMANS ARE EVER GOING TO EXPLORE OTHER PLANETS, SCIENTISTS WILL HAVE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO KEEP THEM HEALTHY FOR YEARS AT A TIME IN SPACE. Hughes-Fulford: HOPEFULLY, IT WILL AID ASTRONAUTS THAT ARE GOING TO MARS. IT WILL AID THOSE OF US BACK ON THE GROUND THAT ARE GETTING OLDER. AND SO OUR HOPE IS THAT WE CAN APPLY THE NEW KNOWLEDGE ACROSS THE BOARD TO ANYONE THAT HAS AN IMMUNE PROBLEM. Narrator: THE STORY OF HOW THE HAWAII RESIDENT BECAME ONE OF THE WORLD'S 57 WOMEN ASTRONAUTS STARTS WITH A LITTLE GIRL IN TEXAS. Hughes-Fulford: I GREW UP IN A VERY SMALL TOWN CALLED MINERAL WELLS. MY FATHER GOT THE FIRST TV IN TOWN. I WOULD WAKE UP ON SATURDAY MORNINGS AND WATCH SCIENCE FICTION. "BUCK ROGERS." Deering: LT. DEERING, CALLING THE AIR CONTROL AT HIDDEN CITY. Hughes-Fulford: WILMA DEERING WAS HIS PILOT. SHE WORE PANTS, AND SHE FLEW THE SHIP. AND I FELT THAT WAS REALLY COOL. I LOVED SPACE, I JUST LOVED IT, AND I WANTED TO BE AN ASTRONAUT. THEN, GROWING UP, I REALIZED AT THE AGE OF 16 WHEN I WENT TO COLLEGE THAT WOMEN WERE NOT ASTRONAUTS. GEE WHIZ. WHY DIDN'T I CATCH ONTO THAT BEFORE? Narrator: BY THE TIME SHE RECEIVED HER PhD IN BIOLOGY AND CHEMISTRY, SHE HAD A DAUGHTER. AND SHE HAD FIGURED OUT THAT HER TICKET TO SPACE WOULD BE A CAREER IN THE SCIENCES. A DECADE LATER, NOW WORKING IN SAN FRANCISCO, HUGHES-FULFORD FINALLY GOT HER CHANCE TO BECOME AN ASTRONAUT. Hughes-Fulford: THEY WERE TAKING PEOPLE FROM THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL THAT WERE ASSISTANT PROFESSORS AND SAYING, "DO YOU WANT TO GO UP? IT'S A TWO-YEAR COMMITMENT." AND SO, OF COURSE, I JUMPED RIGHT IN AND APPLIED. Man: THIS IS YOUR FIRST TIME THROUGH, RIGHT? Hughes-Fulford: THAT'D MAKE A NICE PICTURE. Narrator: IN HOUSTON, THE SEVEN ASTRONAUTS WHO WOULD CREW THE MEDICAL SCIENCES MISSION PREPARED NOT ONLY TO PERFORM THE EXPERIMENTS, THEY ALSO TRAINED TO BE RESEARCH SUBJECTS. Hughes-Fulford: OKAY. GOOD. BEFORE, WE HAD HAD MISSIONS THAT HAD ONE EXPERIMENT HERE, ONE THERE. BUT THIS WAS THE FIRST ONE THAT WAS TOTALLY INTEGRATED, LOOKING AT PEOPLE, RATS, JELLYFISH ACROSS THE BOARD. THESE ARE THE JELLYFISH. WE WERE SUPPOSED TO GO UP IN JANUARY 1986. BUT OUR RAT CAGES WEREN'T WORKING PROPERLY, SO THEY POSTPONED US AND PUT IN THE<i> CHALLENGER.</i> PEOPLE WERE JOKING ABOUT, "OH, THE SCHOOLTEACHER GOT YOUR PLACE." McNair: THAT'S CHRISTA McAULIFFE, OUR PAYLOAD SPECIALIST TEACHER IN SPACE. McAuliffe: [ CHUCKLES ] Man: THIS IS MISSION CONTROL HOUSTON... Hughes-Fulford: AT NASA, YOU ALWAYS SIT AND YOU WATCH THE LAUNCHES. YOU JUST WATCH. WE WERE LOOKING FOR AN INTACT SHUTTLE. AND WHEN WE DIDN'T SEE IT, WE REALIZED THAT THE ENTIRE SHUTTLE HAD EXPLODED. GOING INTO SPACE IS NOT A RISK-FREE BUSINESS. AND I THINK EVERYONE ON BOARD ANY SHUTTLE KNOWS THE RISK. Woman: PAYLOAD SPECIALIST MILLIE HUGHES-FULFORD IS MAKING HER FIRST TRIP INTO SPACE TODAY. Narrator: FIVE YEARS WENT BY BEFORE THE MEDICAL SCIENCES MISSION FINALLY LAUNCHED IN 1991. Woman: LIFTOFF OF<i> COLUMBIA</i> AND THE FIRST DEDICATED MEDICAL-RESEARCH FLIGHT. Hughes-Fulford: EVERY DAY, WE WOULD GO THROUGH AND EXERCISE BIKE, BREATHING, 'CAUSE THEY WERE ABLE TO MEASURE THE CHANGE IN OUR BODIES FROM DAY TO DAY ON EVERY EXPERIMENT. AND SO IT WAS VERY POWERFUL TO SEE THE LOSS OF ENERGY IN OUR MUSCLES IN THE EXERCISE. WE HAD MORE DATA GOING DOWN THAN ANY OTHER MISSION AHEAD OF US, EVER. Man: ROGER THAT,<i> COLUMBIA.</i> WELCOME BACK. Narrator: HER TIME IN SPACE PIQUED A LIFELONG INTEREST IN HOW THE BODY FARES WITHOUT GRAVITY. SHE SENT UP A STRING OF SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENTS ON SHUTTLE MISSIONS. BUT HER WORK CAME TO A HALT WHEN THE<i> COLUMBIA</i> EXPLODED ON REENTRY IN 2003. NASA's DEDICATED SCIENCE SHUTTLE WAS GONE. Hughes-Fulford: WE DECIDED WE WOULD FORGE AHEAD. I MADE A FEW CALLS TO NASA HEADQUARTERS. I WAS TOLD THAT WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO GET IT UP ON SOYUZ. Narrator: HUGHES-FULFORD FOUND A WAY TO REPEAT THE EXPERIMENT SHE HAD LOST ON THE<i> COLUMBIA.</i> IN 2006 AND 2007, TWO OF HER EXPERIMENTS LEFT KAZAKHSTAN ON BOARD RUSSIAN SOYUZ CAPSULES HEADED TO THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION. Hughes-Fulford: PEGGY, YURI, AND THE SHIP, PLEASE TAKE CARE OF MY EXPERIMENT, PKINASE. Narrator: AND HUGHES-FULFORD CONTINUES TO ADAPT TO CHANGE. NOW THAT NASA HAS CLOSED DOWN THE SHUTTLE PROGRAM, SHE'S FOUND A NEW WAY TO SEND HER EXPERIMENTS TO THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION FROM THE UNITED STATES. HER NINTH EXPERIMENT LEFT CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA, IN APRIL 2014, ON BOARD A FLIGHT BY SpaceX -- ONE OF THE COMPANIES PIONEERING THE PRIVATIZATION OF SPACE TRAVEL. Hughes-Fulford: THE DRAGON CAPSULE COMES BACK JUST LIKE THE APOLLO CAPSULES CAME BACK -- INTO THE PACIFIC OCEAN. SpaceX THEN GOES OUT AND RETRIEVES IT. Narrator: HUGHES-FULFORD'S EXPERIMENT, WHICH LANDED IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN A MONTH LATER, WAS AMONG THE FIRST TO BE CARRIED BY SpaceX -- ANOTHER FIRST IN A CAREER FULL OF THEM. Hughes-Fulford: I HAVE HAD THE LUXURY OF BEING ABLE TO WAKE UP IN THE MORNING AND HAVE A NEW THOUGHT AND GO IN AND TEST IT, TO HAVE EXPERIMENTS, TO MAKE NEW FINDINGS. I'M VERY EXCITED THAT WE'RE ABLE TO HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO USE SPACE AS A TOOL TO STUDY THE HUMAN BODY.
Early life
Millie Elizabeth Hughes was born in Mineral Wells, Texas on December 21, 1945.[3][1][2] She graduated from Mineral Wells High School in 1962,[4] then entered college at the age of 16 and earned her Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and biology from Tarleton State University in 1968.[5] She then began her graduate work studying plasma chemistry at Texas Woman's University as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow from 1968 to 1971 and earned her Ph.D. in 1972.[6][7] From 1971 to 1972, she was also both an American Association of University Women Fellow and a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.[8]
Career
After earning her doctorate degree in 1972, Dr. Hughes-Fulford applied to roughly 100 jobs in academia, from which she received four replies.[4] This resulted in her joining the faculty of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas as a postdoctoral fellow with Marvin D. Siperstein, where her research focused on the regulation of cholesterol metabolism.[9] Within a couple of years, she relocated with her laboratory to San Francisco.[4]
In 1978, she noticed a printed recruiting advertisement calling for female astronauts, which led her to apply for the space program. Out of the 8000 applicants, Hughes-Fulford was in the top 20 but did not make it into NASA Astronaut Group 8.[4] She was not deterred and continued pursuing a career in space; she was also a member of the U.S. Army Reserve Medical Corps, achieving the rank of major and serving from 1981 until 1995.[2]
NASA
Selected into a payload specialist by NASA in January 1983, Hughes-Fulford flew in June 1991 aboard STS-40 Spacelab Life Sciences (SLS 1), the first Spacelab mission dedicated to biomedical studies. SLS-1 was also the first mission to have a crew with three female members, and Hughes-Fulford was both NASA's first female payload specialist in orbit and the first representative of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs in space.[6] The mission flew over 3.2 million miles in 146 orbits and its crew completed over 18 experiments during a nine-day period, bringing back more medical data than any previous NASA flight. Mission duration was 218 hours, 14 minutes and 21 seconds, or 9 days, 2 hours, 14 minutes, and 20 seconds.[9][10][11]
Later career
After her space mission for NASA, Hughes-Fulford was a professor at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center where she continued her research until her death in 2021. She created and directed the Hughes-Fulford Laboratory[12] at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, where her research focus included immunology, bioastronautics, and oncology.[4]
She was the Principal Investigator (PI) on a series of SpaceHab/Biorack experiments, which examined the regulation of osteoblast (bone cell) growth.[9] These experiments flew on STS-76, in March 1996, STS-81 in January 1997, and STS-84 in May 1997, and studied the root causes of osteoporosis that occurs in astronauts during spaceflight.[2] One experiment resulted in observations of changes in anabolic signal transduction in microgravity.[9] A later collaborator was Dr. Augusto Cogoli of Zürich, Switzerland; one experiment with Dr. Cogoli was lost in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster,[9] and another experiment using technology from Affymetrix and reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) examined changes in T-cell gene induction in spaceflight on a joint NASA/ESA International Space Station mission that launched on the Soyuz TMA-9 in 2006.[9]
Further studies of gene regulation and signal transduction in spaceflight were approved in January 2002 for Shuttle/ISS experiments examining protein kinase C (PKC) signal activation. She flew her most recent experiments to ISS on a SpaceX rocket in collaboration with the ISS International Laboratory, the European Space Agency, and the National Institutes of Health. In those studies, she found one basis for changes in the immune system in spaceflight.[6] Many of her publications are available at her laboratory web site.[12]
Hughes-Fulford contributed over 120 papers and abstracts, including on bone and cancer growth regulation, and on the effect of spaceflight on the immune system at the cell molecular and systems biology level.[9] She was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Society for Gravitational Science and Biology, American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, American Society for Cell Biology, American Society of Hematology and the Association of Space Explorers.[9]
Personal life
Hughes-Fulford was married twice. Her first marriage was to policeman Rick Wiley, with whom she had a daughter, and ended in divorce in the late 1970s. Her second marriage was in 1983 to George Fulford, a United Airlines pilot whom she met in 1981. She died in Mill Valley, California on February 2, 2021, of lymphoma,[4] which was the subject of her last research paper.[5][1]
Awards and honors
- 2004–2013 Universities Space Research Association, Board of Trustees[9]
- 1995–2001 Advisory Board for Marine Biological Laboratory, Sciences Writing Program, Woods Hole, Massachusetts[9]
- 1995 International Zontian[5]
- 1995 Marin County Woman of the Year[5]
- 1991 NASA Space Flight Medal[6]
- 1987–1990 National Research Council, Committee on Space Biology and Space Medicine[9]
- 1986–1989 Board of Regents Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Florida[9]
- 1984 Presidential Award for Federal Employee for Western Region[5][9]
- 1971–1972 MacArthur Foundation Fellow[8]
- 1971–1972 American Association of University Women's Fellowship[5]
- 1968–1971 National Science Foundation Fellow (Graduate)[5]
- 1965 National Science Foundation Summer Research Fellow (Undergraduate)[5]
References
- ^ a b c Sandomir, Richard (February 11, 2021). "Millie Hughes-Fulford, NASA Shuttle Scientist, Dies at 75". The New York Times. Retrieved February 12, 2021.
- ^ a b c d "Millie Hughes-Fulford, first female payload specialist in space, dies". collectSPACE.com. February 4, 2021.
- ^ Pearlman, Robert Z. (February 5, 2021). "Millie Hughes-Fulford, NASA's first female payload specialist in space, dies at 75". Space.com. Retrieved February 7, 2021.
- ^ a b c d e f Whiting, Sam (February 5, 2021). "Millie Hughes-Fulford, astronaut and UCSF scientist, dies at 75". San Francisco Chronicle.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Millie Hughes-Fulford, PhD". cancer.ucsf.edu.
- ^ a b c d Pearlman, Robert Z. (February 4, 2021). "Millie Hughes-Fulford, NASA's first female payload specialist in space, dies at 75". msn.com.
- ^ Hughes Wiley, Millie (1972). Reactions of C1-C4 hydrocarbons in radio-frequency plasma ... (Ph.D. thesis). Denton, Texas: Texas Woman's University. OCLC 13905022.
- ^ a b "Millie Hughes-Fulford, PhD". endocrine.ucsf.edu.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m "Payload Specialist Astronaut Bio: Millie Hughes-Fulford (03/2014)" (PDF). NASA. Retrieved April 2, 2021. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
- ^ "Spacedu.com – Medical Achievements in Cell Technology". spacedu.com. Archived from the original on January 9, 2019. Retrieved September 3, 2004.
- ^ Becker, Joachim. "Astronaut Biography: Millie Hughes-Fulford". spacefacts.de. Archived from the original on October 18, 2020.
- ^ a b "Hughes-Fulford Laboratory". hughesfulfordlab.com. Archived from the original on February 5, 2021. Retrieved April 12, 2019.