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Donna Shirley

Donna Shirley was raised in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, population 2,500. Her parents encouraged her academic studies, but most people were surprised when the very small girl took an intense interest in flying airplanes. Her father and uncle encouraged her, and before she was out of her teens, Donna Shirley was soloing and earning her pilot's licenses. She entered college in the 1950s with the express purpose of studying aeronautic engineering when engineering schools were still an all-male bastion. From her early teens she had been fascinated by science fiction and dreamed of exploring Mars. Her very first post-graduate assignments led her into the technology which has played a role in the actual exploration of the red planet. After graduation, Donna Shirley worked as a spec writer in St. Louis before winning a job with NASA. She worked on the very first unmanned mission to Mars in 1966 and continued her association with Mars research, a devotion that came to splendid fruition on July 4, 1997. The entire world watched as the Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner Rover successfully landed on Mars. Two months later the Mars Global Surveyor successfully went into orbit around the red planet, providing the world with some of the most important scientific data of the 20th and 21st centuries.... Next

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