Nicole is a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and the University of Central Florida, and she is a SCUBA diver and instrumented rated private pilot.
Astronaut, aquanaut, and artist, and now author of her first book Back to Earth What Life In Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet – And Our Mission To Protect It.
She creatively combines the awe and wonder of her spaceflight experience with her artwork to inspire everyone’s appreciation of the role as crewmates on Spaceship Earth.
Nicole is a veteran NASA Astronaut with two spaceflights and 104 days living and working in space as a crewmember on both the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle. Personal highlights of her time in space were performing a spacewalk (10th woman to do so), flying the robotic arm to capture the first HTV, working with her international crew in support of the multi-disciplinary science onboard the orbiting laboratory, painting a watercolor (now on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum), and of course the view out the window.
She is also a NASA Aquanaut. In preparation for spaceflight, she was a crewmember on an 18-day saturation dive mission at the Aquarius undersea laboratory.
Nicole believes that the international model of peaceful and successful cooperation experienced in the extreme environments of space and sea holds the key to the same kind of peaceful and successful cooperation for all of humanity here on Earth.
She is the founder of the Space for Art Foundation — uniting a planetary community of children through the awe and wonder of space exploration and the healing power of art.
Her first book Back to Earth is available now for pre-order here.