Rhea Seddon

Margaret Rhea Seddon (born November 8, 1947) is an American surgeon and retired NASA astronaut. After being selected as part of the first group of astronauts to include women in 1978, she flew on three Space Shuttle flights: as a mission specialist on STS-51-D and STS-40, and as a payload commander for STS-58, accumulating over 722 hours in space. On these flights, she built repair tools for a US Navy satellite and performed medical experiments.

A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, Seddon was awarded her doctor of medicine (MD) degree in 1973. During her residency with the University of Tennessee hospitals, she was the only woman in the General Surgery Residency Program. Before, during, and after her career in the astronaut program, she was active in hospitals emergency departments in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Texas.

Seddon became an astronaut on August 9, 1979, after selection as a candidate the year prior. At NASA her development work included the Space Shuttle Orbiter and payload software, the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory, the Flight Data File, the Space Shuttle medical kit, and checklists for launch and landing. She was a rescue helicopter physician for the early Space Shuttle flights and a support crew member for STS-6. She served as a member of NASA's Aerospace Medical Advisory Committee, as a technical assistant to the director of flight crew operations, and as a capsule communicator (CAPCOM) in the Mission Control Center. In 1996 she was detailed by NASA to Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville, Tennessee, where she assisted in the preparation of cardiovascular experiments that flew on the STS-90 Neurolab Spacelab flight in April 1998. She retired from NASA in November 1997 and became Assistant Chief Medical Officer of the Vanderbilt Medical Group.