Which space shuttle had the first female pilot, Eileen Collins?
Answer
Discovery
Answer
Discovery
The space shuttle Discovery had the first female pilot, Eileen Collins.
Collins served as pilot of STS-63, Discovery’s twentieth mission, which launched on February 3, 1995. The flight was the second Shuttle-Mir mission and included a close approach to Russia’s Mir space station, helping test procedures for later docking missions.
Discovery’s crew also included mission specialist Bernard Harris, who became the first African-American to walk in space. The shuttle completed a 20-foot approach to Mir, but it did not dock because the mission was primarily a rendezvous and systems test.
Collins later became the first woman to command a space shuttle, leading STS-93 aboard Columbia in 1999. That later achievement is sometimes confused with her earlier milestone as a pilot. For this question, the canonical answer is Discovery, the orbiter used for her first spaceflight and historic pilot assignment.
Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Aug. 2026