March 31, 2022, at William Jewell College Presented in partnership with William Jewell College. Astronaut Linda Godwin includes her own spaceflight experiences as she discusses how NASA human exploration has changed over time, and how the evolving role of commercial and private space flight in low Earth orbit, and possibly beyond, partners with NASA’s plans for human missions to the Moon, asteroids, and eventually to Mars. The speaker: Linda Godwin, PhD, a native of Jackson, Missouri, received a BS degree in mathematics and physics from Southeast Missouri State University and an MS and PhD in physics from the University of Missouri, where her research was in low temperature condensed matter physics. In 1980, Dr. Godwin joined NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, working in Payload Operations. In this role she supported the development and integration of science missions for the early Space Shuttle Program and served as a flight controller and payloads officer in the Mission Control Center for several flights prior to being selected as an astronaut candidate in 1985. A veteran of four shuttle flights, Dr. Godwin has logged over 915 hours (over 38 days) in space. She flew in space as a mission specialist on STS-37 (1991), which deployed the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. She was assigned to STS-59, an Earth science mission, as a payload commander. She then was a mission specialist on STS-76 in 1996, which docked to the Russian Space Station MIR. Dr. Godwin participated in a spacewalk to install experiment packages on the Mir station to detect and assess debris and contamination surrounding the space station. On STS-108, launching in December of 2001, a station crew exchange mission, Dr. Godwin used the shuttle’s robotic arm to install the Multipurpose Logistics Module (MPLM) onto the station node and she participated in a spacewalk to install thermal blankets on two Beta Gimbal Assemblies at the base of the station’s two solar wings. Following her NASA career, Dr. Godwin was a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Missouri, in Columbia, Missouri for eight years where she taught physics and astronomy classes and worked with students in undergraduate research in astrophysics. She is currently an emeritus professor of the department and still serves in an adjunct capacity. Video filmed and produced by The VideoWorks, LLC.

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