Kathryn Sullivan, PhD, is an American geologist, oceanographer, NASA astronaut, and US Navy officer. She received her doctorate in geology from Dalhousie University and the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Nova Scotia, Canada. Encouraged by her family, Sullivan applied to NASA to become an astronaut and in 1978 was selected as one of six women in NASA Astronaut Group 8, the first to include women. During her first mission, she performed the first extra-vehicular activity (EVA) by an American woman, and on her second she helped deploy the Hubble Space Telescope. She was a crew member on three Space Shuttle missions, logging over 532 hours in space. Sullivan left NASA in 1993 to become Chief Scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), later serving as Under Secretary and Administrator from 2013 to 2017. On June 7, 2020, Sullivan became the first woman to dive into the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of Earth’s oceans, becoming the only person to have both orbited the Earth and descended to the Challenger Deep, attaining a Guinness World Record for greatest vertical span.
