Nicole Aunapu Mann

Nicole Aunapu Mann, born on June twenty-seventh, nineteen seventy-seven, is a distinguished Native American test pilot and NASA astronaut. With a remarkable career as an F/A-18 Hornet pilot, she has honed her skills through rigorous training at the US Naval Academy, Stanford University, and the US Naval Test Pilot School. Mann boasts over two thousand five hundred flight hours across twenty-five types of aircraft, complemented by two hundred carrier landings and forty-seven combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In two thousand fifteen, Mann completed her astronaut training and was initially assigned to the Boeing CST-100 Starliner’s first crewed test flight, known as Boe-CFT, in August two thousand eighteen. However, she was later reassigned to the SpaceX Crew-5 mission, where she made history as the first female commander of a NASA Commercial Crew Program launch.

Mann's inaugural spaceflight took place in October two thousand twenty-two, marking her as the first Native American woman to venture into space. Her mission extended for several months, and on January twentieth, two thousand twenty-three, she achieved another milestone by becoming the first Native American woman to conduct a spacewalk, collaborating with fellow astronaut Koichi Wakata.