Rhea Seddon

Margaret Rhea Seddon (born November 8, 1947) is an American surgeon and retired NASA astronaut. After being selected as part of the first group of astronauts to include women in 1978, she flew on three Space Shuttle flights: as a mission specialist on STS-51-D and STS-40, and as a payload commander for STS-58, accumulating over 722 hours in space. On these flights, she built repair tools for a US Navy satellite and performed medical experiments.

A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, Seddon was awarded her doctor of medicine (MD) degree in 1973. During her residency with the University of Tennessee hospitals, she was the only woman in the General Surgery Residency Program. Before, during, and after her career in the astronaut program, she was active in hospitals emergency departments in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Texas.

Seddon became an astronaut on August 9, 1979, after selection as a candidate the year prior. At NASA her development work included the Space Shuttle Orbiter and payload software, the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory, the Flight Data File, the Space Shuttle medical kit, and checklists for launch and landing. She was a rescue helicopter physician for the early Space Shuttle flights and a support crew member for STS-6. She served as a member of NASA's Aerospace Medical Advisory Committee, as a technical assistant to the director of flight crew operations, and as a capsule communicator (CAPCOM) in the Mission Control Center. In 1996 she was detailed by NASA to Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville, Tennessee, where she assisted in the preparation of cardiovascular experiments that flew on the STS-90 Neurolab Spacelab flight in April 1998. She retired from NASA in November 1997 and became Assistant Chief Medical Officer of the Vanderbilt Medical Group.

Margaret Rhea Seddon was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on November 8, 1947, the first child of Edward C. Seddon, a lawyer, and his wife Clayton Ransom née Dann. She had a younger sister, Louise. Seddon was named after her maternal grandmother, and known by her middle name, Rhea, which is pronounced "ray". She grew up in Murfreesboro, where she attended St. Rose of Lima Catholic School. The nuns at St. Rose did not teach science until the Sputnik crisis made it a national priority. A science teacher was then recruited, and Seddon began studying science in the seventh grade. In 1960 she wrote a school report on what would happen to people who ventured into space. She attended Central High School in Murfreesboro, where she was a cheerleader. She graduated in 1965.

A friend of the family, Lois Kennedy, was a physician—Seddon worked in her office one summer—and inspired her to pursue a career in medicine. Another friend of the family, Florence Ridley, a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, recommended some universities in California with good life sciences programs. Seddon entered the University of California, Berkeley, where she joined the Sigma Kappa sorority. Her father had been on the board of directors of Rutherford County Hospital, which was opening a new coronary care unit in the summer after her freshman year, and he arranged for Seddon to spend her summer there as an aide. However, the new center's opening was delayed, and she spent the summer working in the surgical unit, where she decided to become a surgeon. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in physiology in 1970.

During her senior year at Berkeley, Seddon was accepted by the University of Tennessee College of Medicine. When she matriculated in 1970, there were only six women in the class of more than one hundred medical students. She was awarded her Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree in 1973. Her father paid for flying lessons as a graduation gift. Seddon did her one-year internship at the Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis. Women were not permitted in the surgery doctors' lounge there, so she had to wait between cases on a folding chair in the nurses' bathroom. She then did three years of residency at the University of Tennessee hospitals in Memphis, where she was the only woman in the General Surgery Residency Program. She worked in emergency departments at several hospitals in Mississippi and Tennessee, despite this being against the rules of the residency program.

On July 8, 1976, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) issued a call for applications for pilot and mission specialist candidates. It was the first time that women were encouraged to apply. A colleague, Russ Greer, a neurosurgery resident who had worked at NASA and was aware that Seddon had expressed an interest in becoming an astronaut, informed Seddon of the selection process that was underway, and she decided to apply. She wrote to NASA and was sent an application form. She found that at 62 inches (157 cm) in height, she was just tall enough to meet the minimum height requirement of 60 inches (152 cm) for mission specialists. The application required three references, and she chose three people who had most strongly influenced her to that point: James Pate, the head of surgery at the hospital; Jose Guma, her flying instructor; and Jim Arnhart, the administrator of Rutherford Hospital.

From 8,079 applicants NASA identified 208 for further screening, conducted in groups of about twenty. Seddon was contacted by Jay F. Honeycutt from NASA and was asked to come to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) for a week of interviews and physical examinations, beginning August 29, 1977. Her group of twenty applicants was the first one that included women. Among the eight women in the group were Anna Sims, Shannon Lucid, Nitza Cintron, and Millie Hughes-Wiley. Afterwards, she returned to the Memphis Veterans Administration Hospital, where she commenced a residency in plastic surgery. She soon changed course again after she developed a particular interest in the nutrition of surgery patients. In January 1978 journalist Jules Bergman asked if he could interview her on Good Morning America, and he revealed that she had been selected for astronaut training; Seddon received official word from George Abbey, NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations on January 16. The names of the 35 successful candidates in NASA Astronaut Group 8 were publicly released later that day.