Ponytail in Space

Dec. 20, 2006 — -- It is item 811.1 on the Mission Control Execute summary for Flight Day 11 of STS 116, the space shuttle mission currently in orbit around Earth.

Item 811.1 is astronaut Suni Williams' ponytail. That's right. Her ponytail.

It's the first time a ponytail has been itemized on a transfer list to be returned to Earth from space. Astronaut Joan Higginbotham, Williams' colleague on the space shuttle, cut her hair for her on Sunday.

Williams' hair has been quite noticeable during the last nine days of the shuttle mission. She is a smart, tall, willowy brunette with a wicked sense of humor, and she has a zest for life.

Williams was dancing to Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" before she climbed into her spacesuit for a grueling 7½-hour spacewalk on Saturday.

She ended the spacewalk shaking a sticky solar array to get it to retract.

A Hairy Mission for a Good Cause

Williams' hair is coming back on the Space Shuttle Discovery because she made plans before her launch to donate it to a program that uses hair to make wigs for cancer patients.

Her friends are not surprised she would do something like this. Williams kept this plan very low key, but when you are in space, there's not much you can keep secret from Mission Control.

Every bit of weight counts on a space shuttle, and hence, even a ponytail will show up on a cargo list.

Zero gravity is a challenge for a woman's hair. All of a sudden hair has volume. Hair floats, so there's not much an astronaut can do about it unless you braid it like astronaut Lisa Nowak did earlier this summer on STS 121.

Commander Eileen Collins had short hair that just fluffed up a little on the first "Return to Flight" shuttle mission in 2005.

Astronaut Cady Coleman has long hair as well. For a long time, she says, women were encouraged to keep their hair tied back in space, partly for safety. She thought her hair held up well in space.

"Without gravity, it gets curlier, and your hair doesn't get in the way because the hair moves with your head," she said.

Before she flew on her first mission, Coleman was told she needed to cut it or wear it in a ponytail.

Collins, the commander of her second mission, STS 93, told her, "Why don't you just leave it down or how will people know we are in space?"

On Being a Role Model

Williams is also a Navy commander who has flown helicopters and logged more than 2,700 hours in 30 different aircraft. Does she consider herself a role model for young girls?

"I hope so. I wasn't always the sharpest tool in the shed, the smartest kid on the block, but I think there was a lot of persistence," Williams said. "And I hope kids understand it is OK to fail, if you learn something from failing."

Williams wants young, aspiring female astronauts -- and young girls in general -- to realize the value of persistence.

"I tell little girls about the story of when I started flight school. 'Top Gun' came out, so of course everybody wanted to fly jets," she said. "That was the cool thing to do, and I put that down as my first choice but I got helicopters because there weren't that many jet billets."

"I did pretty good at that. You just sort of take what you get. Maybe you don't get the first thing that you want, but if you are good at what you do, and you try hard, some things sort of fall into place," she said.

"I hope that message comes across clearly, that if you want something, you can obtain it," Williams said. "Maybe not the path you thought you were going down, but it will work out if you try hard and are persistent."

Williams' persistence paid off. She finished her first space shuttle flight, and she is staying behind to become the flight engineer on the International Space Station for the next six months.

So her hair will have some time to grow back.