William Oefelein

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In 1988, Oefelein received his commission as an Ensign in the United States Navy from Naval Aviation Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida. He entered flight training in Texas in 1989 and was designated a Naval Aviator in September 1990. His early assignments included overseas deployments to the Persian Gulf as a strike fighter pilot in the F/A-18 Hornet. After attending the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program (a.k.a. TOPGUN), Oefelein graduated in 1995 from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, where he later served as an instructor. In 1998, he was working as a strike operations officer for Carrier Air Wing Eight at NAS Oceana, Virginia.

In June 1998, Oefelein was selected by the NASA Astronaut Corps to be an Astronaut Candidate in NASA Astronaut Group 17. After two years of training and evaluation, he was promoted to Astronaut, receiving his Astronaut Pin, with qualification for the NASA position of Space Shuttle pilot. He was initially assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Advanced Vehicles Branch and Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM) Branch. Oefelein's only mission was piloting Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-116, which launched on December 9, 2006, logging over 308 hours in space before landing on December 22.

Five months after completing his only space mission, and three months after his married former girlfriend, fellow astronaut Lisa Nowak, attacked his current girlfriend Colleen Shipman, NASA terminated Oefelein's service with the space agency on May 23, 2007, stating that NASA and the U.S. Navy had made "a mutual decision" that his service with the NASA Astronaut Corps was no longer required, and that he would be reassigned to the U.S. Navy. Oefelein and Nowak were the first astronauts ever dismissed by NASA, which created a written Code of Conduct for the NASA Astronaut Corps following their termination. Oefelein retired from the Navy in the fall of 2008, returning to Alaska to start a business called Adventure Write as a freelance writer and photographer with Shipman, then his fiancée and current wife.

Oefelein served as pilot for the STS-116 mission aboard Space Shuttle Discovery from December 9 to 22, 2006. The seven-member crew on this 12-day mission continued construction of the International Space Station by adding the P5 spacer truss segment during the first of four spacewalks. The next two spacewalks rewired the station's power system, preparing it to support the addition of European and Japanese science modules by future Shuttle crews. The fourth spacewalk was added to allow the crew to coax and retract a stubborn solar panel to fold up accordion-style into its box. Discovery also delivered a new crew member and more than two tons of equipment and supplies to the station. Almost two tons of items no longer needed on the station returned to Earth with STS-116.

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