When Roberta Bondar was young she would gaze up at the clear night skies of Northern Ontario and pretend to be Flash Gordon on an asteroid in search of Ming the Merciless. She made models of rockets, collected posters and badges from NASA and played with crystal radio sets, hoping to make first contact with alien beings. Later she took physics and mathematics courses in high school and university, got a private pilot's license and received university degrees in zoology and biology. She became a doctor specializing in neurology. Then she joined the Canadian Space Program and trained in the USA for three full years to do science in space. In January, 1992, she became the first Canadian woman in space when she flew on the space shuttle Discovery as a payload specialist on the first International Microgravity Laboratory Mission.
Sources: Bondar
© 1996 Softshell Small Systems Software Design Inc.
