Bidspirit auction | Astronaut Ann Whitaker signed Space

Astronaut Ann Whitaker signed Space Shuttle FDC PM Kennedy Space Ctr, FL 32815 Nov 20 AM 1986. Whitaker joined NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in 1963. Her initial research there concerned she effects of space environments on lubrication and, later in the 1960s, on the crawler-transporter used to move Saturn V rockets before their launch. In the 1970s, she became a candidate payload specialist for space missions, and in 1974, she was one of four women chosen to perform a simulated Spacelab science mission, although she never went to space herself. She became, successively, chief of the Physical Sciences Branch, Engineering Physics Division, and Project and Environmental Engineering Division at the Marshall Space Flight Center in 1977, 1984, and 1993, respectively. In 2001, after additional roles as deputy director of the Space Sciences Laboratory and director of the Materials, Processes and Manufacturing Department, she was named head of the Science Directorate at the Marshall Space Flight Center.