Millie Hughes-Fulford, NASA Shuttle Scientist, Dies at 75 | The New York Times

Millie Hughes-Fulford, Courtesy of NASA

Millie Hughes-Fulford was an alumna of the Physiology course (1987) and Analytical and Quantitative Light Microscopy course (1999).

Millie Hughes-Fulford, NASA’s first female payload specialist, who conducted biomedical experiments on the physical toll of spaceflight on humans on board in 1991, died on Feb. 2 at her home in Mill Valley, Calif. She was 75.

The cause was cancer, her daughter, Tori Herzog, said. Dr. Hughes-Fulford had received a diagnosis of lymphoma in 2014, and cancer had recently been found in her esophagus.

Dr. Hughes-Fulford had aspired to fly to outer space since childhood. She achieved her goal on the Columbia in June 1991, eight years after , the first American woman in space, flew on the Challenger.

The experiments Dr. Hughes-Fulford conducted on the shuttle were only the start of her yearslong examination into the effects of weightlessness on the body’s immune system and bone mass.

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