Katherine Megan McArthur (born August 30, 1971) is an American

oceanographer Oceanography (), also known as oceanology, sea science, ocean science, and marine science, is the scientific study of the ocean, including its physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. It is an Earth science, which covers a wide range of top ...

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

, and

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...

. She has served as a

Capsule Communicator Flight controllers are personnel who aid space flight by working in mission control centers such as NASA's Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center or ESA's European Space Operations Centre. Flight controllers work at computer consoles ...

(CAPCOM) for both the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable launch system, reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. ...

and

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

(ISS). Megan McArthur has flown one Space Shuttle mission,

STS-125 STS-125, or HST-SM4 (Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission 4), was the fifth and final Space Shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The launch of the Space Shuttle ''Atlantis'' occurred on May 11, 2009, at 2:01 pm EDT. Land ...

, and one SpaceX mission,

SpaceX Crew-2 SpaceX Crew-2 was the second operational flight of a SpaceX Dragon 2, Crew Dragon spacecraft, and the third overall crewed orbital flight of the Commercial Crew Program. The mission was launched on 23 April 2021 at 09:49:02 Coordinated Univers ...

on Crew Dragon ''Endeavour''. She is known as the last person to be hands on with the

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the Orbiting Solar Observatory, first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most ...

via the

Canadarm Canadarm or Canadarm1 (officially Shuttle Remote Manipulator System or SRMS, also SSRMS) is a series of robotic arms that were used on the Space Shuttle orbiters to deploy, manoeuvre, and capture payloads. After the Space Shuttle ''Columbia' ...

. McArthur has served in a number of positions including working in the Shuttle Avionics Laboratory (SAIL). She is married to fellow astronaut Robert L. Behnken.

Early life

McArthur was born in

Honolulu, Hawaii Honolulu ( ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the county seat of the Consolidated city-county, consolidated City and County of Honol ...

, but grew up in

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. She attended

London Central High School London Central Elementary High School (LCEHS), formerly London Central High School, was a United States Department of Defense Dependents School (Department of Defense Dependents Schools, DoDDS) in the Isles District of DoDDS Europe for pupils in ...

and graduated from St. Francis High School in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the population was 82,376 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mountain V ...

, then later earned a B.S. degree in

aerospace engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is s ...

at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

in 1993. In 2002, she was awarded a Ph.D. in

oceanography Oceanography (), also known as oceanology, sea science, ocean science, and marine science, is the scientific study of the ocean, including its physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. It is an Earth science, which covers a wide range of to ...

from the

Scripps Institution of Oceanography Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) is the center for oceanography and Earth science at the University of California, San Diego. Its main campus is located in La Jolla, with additional facilities in Point Loma. Founded in 1903 and incorpo ...

at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

Oceanography career

At the

, McArthur conducted graduate research in nearshore underwater acoustic propagation and

digital signal processing Digital signal processing (DSP) is the use of digital processing, such as by computers or more specialized digital signal processors, to perform a wide variety of signal processing operations. The digital signals processed in this manner are a ...

. Her research focused on determining geoacoustic models to describe very shallow water waveguides using measured transmission loss data in a

genetic algorithm In computer science and operations research, a genetic algorithm (GA) is a metaheuristic inspired by the process of natural selection that belongs to the larger class of evolutionary algorithms (EA). Genetic algorithms are commonly used to g ...

inversion technique. She served as chief scientist during at-sea data collection operations and has planned and led diving operations during sea-floor instrument deployments and sediment-sample collections. While at Scripps, she participated in a range of in-water instrument testing, deployment, maintenance, and recovery, and collection of marine plants, animals, and sediment. During this time, McArthur also volunteered at

Birch Aquarium Birch Aquarium is a public aquarium in La Jolla, a community of San Diego, California. It serves as the public outreach center for Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, with over half a million people vi ...

, conducting educational demonstrations for the public from inside a 70,000-gallon (265 m³) exhibit tank of the California Kelp Forest.

NASA career

Selected as a mission specialist by NASA in July 2000, McArthur reported for training in August 2000. She trained at the Sonny Carter Training Facility. Following the completion of two years of training and evaluation, she was assigned to the Astronaut Office Shuttle Operations Branch working technical issues on shuttle systems in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL). McArthur then served as the crew support astronaut for the Expedition 9 crew during their six-month mission aboard the

(ISS). She also worked in the Space Station and Space Shuttle Mission Control Centers as a

(CAPCOM). In 2006, McArthur was the CAPCOM for

STS-116 STS-116 (also known as ISS-12A) was a Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) flown by Space Shuttle Discovery, Space Shuttle '' Discovery''. ''Discovery'' lifted off on December 9, 2006 for her 33rd flight at 20:47:35 Easte ...

. She was also the EVA capcom for the

STS-117 STS-117 (ISS assembly sequence, ISS assembly flight 13A) was a Space Shuttle mission flown by Space Shuttle Atlantis, Space Shuttle ''Atlantis'', launched from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39, pad 39A of the Kennedy Space Center on June ...

mission in 2007.

STS-125

In 2009, Megan McArthur was a member of the

mission to service the

. McArthur was the ascent and entry flight engineer and was the lead robotics crew member for the mission. The mission which lasted almost 13 days was McArthur's first trip into space. In a pre-flight interview, she put it as: "I'll be the last one with hands on the Hubble Space Telescope." In 2019, McArthur was appointed Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office.

Expedition 65/66

ISS-65 Megan McArthur reads a book in the cupola

In July 2020, NASA announced that McArthur would fly into space for the second time on

, along with NASA astronaut

Shane Kimbrough Robert Shane Kimbrough (born June 4, 1967) is a retired United States Army officer and NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the ...

JAXA The is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into o ...

astronaut

Akihiko Hoshide is a Japanese engineer, JAXA The is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology developm ...

, and ESA astronaut

Thomas Pesquet Thomas Gautier Pesquet (; born 27 February 1978) is a French aerospace engineer, aviator, pilot, European Space Agency astronaut, actor, musician, and writer. Pesquet was selected by ESA as a candidate in May 2009, and he successfully completed ...

. She used the same seat inside the

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

Crew Dragon Dragon 2 is a class of partially reusable spacecraft developed, manufactured, and operated by the American space company SpaceX for flights to the International Space Station (ISS) and private spaceflight missions. The spacecraft, which consi ...

capsule ''Endeavour'' which her husband, Bob Behnken used in SpaceX Demo-2, the first mission of the ''Endeavour'' capsule. Crew-2 launched and docked with the ISS in April 2021, beginning their 6 month mission. It splashed down in the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an oceanic basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southw ...

in November 2021.

Awards and honours

In 2022, SpaceX's Dragon support vessel ''

GO Searcher MV ''Megan'', formerly known as MV ''GO Searcher'', is one of SpaceX's two Dragon capsule recovery vessels. Owned by SpaceX through Falcon Landing LLC (which also owns SpaceX's fairing recovery vessels and Elon Musk's private jet), this vessel ...

'' was renamed ''

Megan Megan is a Welsh feminine given name, originally a diminutive form of Margaret. Margaret is from the Greek μαργαρίτης (''margarítēs''), Latin ''margarīta'', "pearl". Megan is one of the most popular Welsh-language names for women in ...

'' along with '' GO Navigator'' as '' Shannon'' after

SpaceX Crew-1 SpaceX Crew-1 (was also known as USCV-1 or simply Crew-1) was the first operational crewed flight of a SpaceX Dragon 2, Crew Dragon spacecraft and the maiden flight of the Crew Dragon Resilience, Crew Dragon ''Resilience'' spacecraft. It was ...

astronaut,

Shannon Walker Shannon Walker (born June 4, 1965) is an American physicist and a NASA astronaut selected in 2004. She launched on her first mission into space on June 25, 2010, onboard Soyuz TMA-19 and spent over 163 days in space. She returned to space for ...

. A SpaceX fairing recovery/ droneship support vessel was named after her husband as '' Bob'' in 2021. In 2021, McArthur was selected as
Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst

Personal life

McArthur is married to fellow astronaut Bob Behnken, and they have one son. She appeared as an animated version of herself in seasons 4 and 7 of ''

Blaze and the Monster Machines ''Blaze and the Monster Machines'' is an animated children's television series. It premiered on Nickelodeon on October 13, 2014. The show revolves around Blaze, a monster truck, and his human driver, AJ, as they have adventures in Axle City and ...

''.

References

External links

NASA biography of K. Megan McArthur
March 2016

* {{DEFAULTSORT:McArthur, Katherine Megan American astronauts Aquanauts American women astronauts 1971 births Crew members of the International Space Station Living people People from Honolulu American oceanographers UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni University of California, San Diego alumni Space Shuttle program astronauts SpaceX astronauts Saint Francis High School (Mountain View, California) alumni