She was the primary Native American lady in house, a famend aviator, a warfare veteran, and a prime pupil. Nicole Aunapu “Duke” Mann, a local of Penngrove, now holds the excellence of being the primary Native American lady to stroll on the moon.
In October of final 12 months, Mann led NASA’s most up-to-date expedition to the Worldwide Area Station. Since then, Mann and different astronauts and cosmonauts from the USA, Russia, Europe, Canada, and Japan have been circling the Earth.
The primary Native American lady to placed on a spacesuit and spend time outdoors of a spacecraft, Mann completed a serious first on Friday.
The seven-hour challenge, which began on Friday morning, was captured in distinctive readability by the astronauts’ helmet cameras and broadcast reside on YouTube.
As they labored to construct platforms for a brand new photo voltaic array, the footage confirmed Mann and her accomplice spacewalker, Japan Aerospace Exploration Company mission professional Koichi Wakata, floating greater than 250 miles above a superb blue Earth.
“Copy that, Duke,” was a phrase heard a number of occasions as Mann checked in with Command Central at NASA’s Johnson Area Middle in Houston.
Round 12:30 p.m. Pacific Time, the 2 spacewalkers returned to the airlock of the house station after ending their mission. The airlock’s hatch opened to allow them to out safely after repressurizing.
Mann was born in Petaluma, raised in Penngrove, and attended Rancho Cotate Excessive Faculty in Rohnert Park as a Wailacki member of the Spherical Valley Indian Tribes. She resides in Houston along with her husband and son whereas she isn’t in low Earth orbit.
In 1999, Mann was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant within the U.S. Marine Corps. Since then, he has flown greater than 2,500 hours in 25 several types of plane, made 200 provider arrestments (the abrupt slowing down that happens when planes land on plane carriers), and took part in 47 fight missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On October 5, Mann served because the spacecraft’s commander and led NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission into orbit earlier than docking with the house station about 254 miles above the planet’s floor. Wakata was one in all her 4 crew members, they usually have been anticipated to stay on the Worldwide Area Station for maybe one other month.
In response to knowledge supplied by NASA, the Worldwide Area Station, a cooperative enterprise of 5 house businesses from 15 nations, was first launched in 1998 and at present orbits the Earth at a pace of greater than 17,000 mph. It solely takes the house station round 90 minutes to finish one full rotation of the Earth, which suggests it passes by way of 16 sunrises and sunsets every day, in accordance with NASA.
A Santa Rosa resident named Judy Coffey, whose daughter went to high school with Mann, recollects how the budding starlet all the time appeared headed for the massive time.
“What I can bear in mind is she all the time beloved the sky,” Coffey mentioned final October, after Mann efficiently accomplished the flight into house. “She would all the time speak in regards to the stars and the moon. I can do not forget that so clearly. She was intrigued by the sky and house when she was 10, 12, 13 years previous. It didn’t all the time make sense to me on the time, however it certain does at the moment.”