Megan McArthur, first woman to pilot SpaceX Dragon, retires from NASA after more than two decades

"Some explorers have focused on alpine heights. Others on polar extremes. Megan McArthur is one of the elite few who can say she's piloted both submarines and spacecraft, exploring expanses from the ocean floor to low Earth orbit, looking down on the planet from 250 miles above. Now McArthur, 54, is retiring from NASA, where she has served for more than two decades as an astronaut and senior leader at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Houston."

"Emily Carney, a space historian, described McArthur as a pioneer, one of the first 100 women to fly in space, and someone with a "magnificent career." She was the first woman to pilot a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and the last person to "touch" the Hubble Space Telescope with the space shuttle's robotic arm. She has logged 213 days in orbit - 200 on the International Space Station in 2021."

"She received a PhD in oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego in 2002 - which she completed while training to serve as a NASA astronaut. "That was a really kind of a crazy time in my life, when I got the phone call to ask me: Did I want to come to work as an astronaut, as an astronaut candidate? Of course I said yes,""

Megan McArthur built and piloted a human-powered submarine as an undergraduate and later earned a PhD in oceanography from Scripps in 2002 while training to become a NASA astronaut. She served more than two decades as an astronaut and senior leader at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Houston. McArthur was the first woman to pilot a SpaceX Dragon and the last person to handle the Hubble Space Telescope with the shuttle's robotic arm. She logged 213 days in orbit, including 200 days aboard the International Space Station in 2021 and 13 days on the 2009 shuttle mission.

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