Space
Roberta Bondar
Neurologist and Canada's first woman in space
Born 1945
Photo: JSC/NASA · Public domain
«To fly in space is to see the reality of Earth, alone. To touch Earth after, is to see beauty for the first time.»
Roberta Bondar flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1992 as Canada's first female astronaut and the world's first neurologist in space. She spent a decade afterwards leading research on how the body recovers from spaceflight.
Key achievements
- First Canadian woman in space, Discovery, 1992
- World's first neurologist to fly in space
- Led NASA space medicine research for over a decade
Universities
Toronto, Ontario
Took a PhD in neurobiology in 1974 before qualifying in medicine and joining the astronaut programme.
Facts
- She qualified as a doctor, a neurologist, a pilot and a parachutist before going into space.
- She is an accomplished landscape photographer and has published books of images of Canada's national parks.
- Her post-flight research programme on space medicine ran for more than a decade with NASA.