Woman of the Week – Karen Nyberg

Karen Nyberg is a NASA astronaut who has served on two space fights totaling 180 days in space.

She was selected by NASA in July 2000; her first trip to space was in 2008 aboard the STS-124 Discovery, the 123rd space shuttle flight launched from Kennedy Space Center.

Her experience helped guide her for a second mission. In 2013, she went up as part of Expedition 36/37 aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for a five-and-a-half-month mission.

Source: NASA

Nyberg launched from Kazakhstan on May 28, 2013. During the 166 day voyage, the crew completed five space walks and 2,656 orbits around the Earth. She served as a fight engineer on this mission. She was one of only two women in space at this time, the other being Chinese astronaut Wang Yaping aboard the Tiangong-1 on the Shenzhou 10 mission.

Nyberg was born in Minnesota in 1969. She graduated summa cum laude with a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of North Dakota in 1994.

Her studies continued at the University of Texas at Austin. There, she focused on human thermoregulation and experimental metabolic testing and control (specifically on the control of thermal neutrality in space suits).

When she was chosen by NASA as an astronaut, she spent two years as a Mission Specialist and worked as crew support for people going up to space.

In July 2006, she participated in NEEMO 10, a deep-sea training and simulation exercise at the Aquarius underwater laboratory to help NASA prepare for the return of astronauts to the moon, also manning missions to Mars. The crew lived and worked underwater for seven days.

She has worked various positions as NASA since touching back down to Earth in 2013, including time in the Space Shuttle branch, the Exploration branch, and as Chief of the Robotics branch.

She also runs active and fun Twitter and Instagram pages, highlighting the daily life of a NASA employee. She is married with one child and enjoys recreational activities like running, sewing and painting.