NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 flight engineer Nicole Mann is pictured during a fit check of her spacesuit on Jan. 12, 2023, ahead of a planned spacewalk to upgrade the International Space Station’s power generation system.
Selected as an astronaut candidate in June 2013, Mann is the first Native American woman from NASA in space. In 2018, she was chosen as one of the nine astronauts to crew the first flight tests and missions of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX Crew Dragon. In her first spaceflight, she launched to the International Space Station as commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on Oct. 5, 2022.
While aboard the orbital laboratory, Mann executed two spacewalks totaling 14 hours and two minutes. She also supported two spacewalks as the robotic arm operator and captured the NG-18 cargo resupply spacecraft, S.S. Sally Ride.
View our Native American Heritage Month gallery.
Image Credit: JAXA/Koichi Wakata