Anna Lee Fisher (; born August 24, 1949) is an American chemist, emergency physician and a former NASA astronaut. Formerly married to fellow astronaut Bill Fisher, and the mother of two children, in 1984 she became the first mother to fly in space. During her career at NASA, she was involved with three major programs: the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and the Orion spacecraft.
A graduate of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1971, Fisher started graduate school in chemistry, conducting X-ray crystallographic studies of metallocarboranes. The following year she moved to the UCLA School of Medicine, where she received her Doctor of Medicine degree in 1976. She completed her internship at Harbor General Hospital in Torrance, California, in 1977, and chose to specialize in emergency medicine.
Fisher was selected as an astronaut candidate with NASA Astronaut Group 8, the first group of NASA astronauts to include women, in January 1978. She became the Astronaut Office representative for the development and testing of the Canadarm remote manipulator system and the testing of payload bay door contingency spacewalk procedures. For the first four Space Shuttle missions she was assigned to the search and rescue helicopters supporting the flights. For the next four missions, she was involved in the verification of flight software at the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL), and was a "Cape Crusader"—one of the astronauts who supported vehicle integration and payload testing at Kennedy Space Center. She flew in space on the on the STS-51-A mission in November 1984, during which she used the Canadarm to retrieve two satellites that had been placed in incorrect orbits.
After a leave of absence to raise her family from 1989 to 1995, Fisher returned to the Astronaut Office, where she worked on procedures and training issues in support of the International Space Station (ISS). She was a capsule communicator (CAPCOM) from January 2011 to August 2013, and the lead CAPCOM for ISS Expedition 33. She was involved in the development of the display for the Orion spacecraft until her retirement from NASA in April 2017.
Early life and education Anna Lee Tingle was born in Albany, New York, on August 24, 1949. Her mother Elfriede was born in Germany in 1918 but emigrated to the United States when she was sixteen years old. She went back to Germany to care for her grandmother, and was unable to return to the United States due to the outbreak of World War II. She served in the German military as a Morse code operator during the war. Afterwards, she worked in Berlin for the U.S. Army, where she met Riley F. Tingle. The two returned to the United States, where they were married in April 1949. Over the years the family moved about frequently, living on bases in the United States and Germany, and Tingle grew up as an Army brat. She speaks German fluently.
On May 5, 1961, when Tingle was in the seventh grade at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, her teacher brought in a transistor radio so the class could listen to the radio broadcast of Alan Shepard becoming the first American in space. For the first time Tingle contemplated the notion of becoming an astronaut. It seemed out of reach, as all the Mercury Seven astronauts were military test pilots, a profession from which women were excluded, but she figured that by the time she was old enough there would be space stations, which would need doctors. When she was in high school she volunteered at Harbor General Hospital in Torrance, California, but did not let go of the dream of flying in space. She graduated from San Pedro High School in 1967. Tingle entered the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) studying math. She decided that the job prospects were poor and switched to chemistry, graduating with her Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1971. While there she married and divorced, and her surname changed to "Sims". She then spent a year in graduate school, conducting X-ray crystallographic studies of metallocarboranes, and published three articles in Inorganic Chemistry.
Noting a lack of employment opportunities for chemists who had earned PhDs, she decided to pursue medicine instead. The following year she moved to the UCLA School of Medicine, where she received her Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree in 1976. At the time, medicine was considered a "non-traditional" career for women, and there were only about 15 women in the medical school class of 150. She completed her internship at Harbor General Hospital in 1977. At Harbor General she met Bill Fisher, a fellow intern a year ahead of her. He too was a military brat—the son of a United States Air Force officer—and also hoped to one day fly in space. She chose to specialize in emergency medicine and worked in several hospitals in the Los Angeles area, doing eight 24-hour shifts per month.
NASA astronaut
Selection
Another doctor at Harbor General was Mark Mecikalski, who followed the American space program. At lunch in June 1977 he informed Bill, who was now Sims's fiancé, that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was conducting a selection of a new group of astronauts and recruiting doctors. Bill had Sims paged over the hospital loudspeaker system. They both applied, although they agreed that Sims had the better chance, due to her background in chemistry as well as medicine. They had three weeks to assemble the required documents and submit their applications. Sims posted hers the day before the deadline. NASA received 8,079 applications, and chose 208 for further screening. Sims was invited to come to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, for a week of interviews, evaluations and examinations, commencing on August 29, 1977.
This was the week when Bill and Sims had planned to marry. They brought their wedding forward, and were married at Wayfarers Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, on August 23. She changed her surname to Fisher. She was part of the third group of twenty applicants to be interviewed, and the first one that included women. Among the eight women in the group were Rhea Seddon, Shannon Lucid, Nitza Cintron and Millie Hughes-Wiley. In the interview, Sims was asked if she wanted to have children, and she told them of her intention to have children within the next five years. Bill also received a call from NASA, and in November he was one of the ninth group of applicants to be interviewed. This group included Judith Resnik, who worked for Xerox in nearby El Segundo, California, and Resnik and the Fishers became friends.
In January 1978, Fisher received a call from George Abbey informing her that she had been selected as part of NASA Astronaut Group 8, and would commence on July 5. At the same time, he informed Bill that he had not been selected. Bill was the only unsuccessful applicant to be told of his rejection by Abbey; the job of informing unsuccessful candidates was normally delegated. Fisher was interviewed on television by Connie Chung. That night Bill took Fisher and Resnik, who had also been selected, out to dinner to celebrate. Bill and Fisher moved to Houston, where they bought a house in Clear Lake City. The new job involved a considerable pay cut; from earning about $50,000 per year () as a surgical resident, she dropped down to a government salary of around $23,000 a year (). "It didn't matter what the pay was", she told People magazine. "To be an astronaut, I was willing to pay them."
Training Group 8's name for itself was "TFNG". The abbreviation was deliberately ambiguous; for public purposes, it stood for "Thirty-Five New Guys", but within the group itself, it was known to stand for the military phrase, "the fucking new guy", used to denote newcomers to a military unit. Officially, they were astronaut candidates; they would not become fully-fledged astronauts until their training was complete. Much of the first eight months of their training was in the classroom. Because there were so many of them, the TFNGs did not fit easily into the existing classrooms, so they were split into two groups, red and blue, led by Rick Hauck and John Fabian respectively. Fisher was placed in the blue group. Water survival training was conducted with the 3613th Combat Crew Training Squadron at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida and parasail training at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma.
Astronaut candidate training included learning to fly NASA's T-38 Talon jet aircraft. Mission specialist astronaut candidates like Fisher did not have to qualify as pilots, only ride in the back seat and handle an emergency if the pilot became incapacitated. Fellow TFNGs James Buchli and Dale Gardner, who were naval flight officers, drew up a training syllabus for mission specialist astronaut candidates like Fisher who had no aviation experience. Each was assigned to a pilot astronaut or astronaut candidate as an instructor; Fisher's was astronaut Ken Mattingly. The instructors took pride in the progress of their trainees, and attempted to convey some of their own love of flying. Fisher took private flying lessons, and soloed for the first time in November 1978. On one weekend day each month, she worked in the emergency room at Houston Methodist Clear Lake Hospital or Tampa General Hospital in Florida to keep her medical skills well-honed. To keep in shape she would do a run each day, lifted weights in the gym, and played racquetball.
On August 31, 1979, Fisher completed her training and evaluation period, making her eligible for assignment as a mission specialist on Space Shuttle flight crews, had there been any. NASA had already, on August 1, issued a call for another intake of astronaut candidates. Bill applied again. He had earned a Master of Science degree in engineering from the University of Houston and taken flying lessons to make himself more attractive to the program. This time he was accepted, and became part of NASA Astronaut Group 9. This made them the first married couple to be selected for astronaut training. She attended meetings of the astronaut spouses' club so the wives of her fellow astronauts would not feel threatened by her working closely with their husbands.
Following the one-year basic training program, Fisher was assigned to assist in the design of spacesuits tailored to fit women (called the extra-small Extravehicular Mobility Unit or EMU). In particular, she assisted with the design of an extra-small Hard Upper Torso (HUT). She was given Pete Conrad's old space suit worn on the Apollo 12 and Skylab 2 missions. Conrad was one of the shortest Apollo astronauts, but the suit was still too large. Fisher made do, and wore the suit when she carried out various activities in a water tank to test tools and procedures for extravehicular activity (EVA). Ultimately, NASA decided that the cost and complexity of designing and producing a small space suit was prohibitive, and that it was simpler and cheaper to limit EVAs to astronauts that fit medium- and large-sized suits, rather than adapt the suits to fit small-sized astronauts. Fisher then worked with William B. Lenoir on the development of techniques for repairing the Space Shuttle tiles. She was the Astronaut Office representative for the development and testing of the Canadarm remote manipulator system and the testing of payload bay door contingency spacewalk procedures.