Anna Lee Fisher (née Tingle; born August 24, 1949) is an American chemist, emergency physician and a former NASA astronaut.

After a leave of absence to raise her family from 1989 to 1995, Fisher returned to the Astronaut Office, where she worked on procedures and training issues in support of the International Space Station (ISS).

She went back to Germany to care for her grandmother, and was unable to return to the United States due to the outbreak of World War II.

Over the years the family moved about frequently, living on bases in the United States and Germany,[4] and Tingle grew up as an Army brat.

It seemed out of reach, as all the Mercury Seven astronauts were military test pilots, a profession from which women were excluded,[6][8] but she figured that by the time she was old enough there would be space stations, which would need doctors.

[10] She then spent a year in graduate school, conducting X-ray crystallographic studies of metallocarboranes,[8] and published three articles in Inorganic Chemistry.

At lunch in June 1977 he informed Bill, who was now Sims's fiancé, that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was conducting a selection of a new group of astronauts and recruiting doctors.

[3] Sims was invited to come to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, for a week of interviews, evaluations and examinations, commencing on August 29, 1977.

[17] They brought their wedding forward, and were married at Wayfarers Chapel in Paseo Del Mar, San Pedro, California, on August 23.

[19][16] In January 1978, Fisher received a call from George Abbey informing her that she had been selected as part of NASA Astronaut Group 8, and would commence on July 5.

[24] Because there were so many of them, the TFNGs did not fit easily into the existing classrooms, so they were split into two groups, red and blue, led by Rick Hauck and John Fabian respectively.

[23] Fellow TFNGs James Buchli and Dale Gardner, who were naval flight officers, drew up a training syllabus for mission specialist astronaut candidates like Fisher who had no aviation experience.

[21] On August 31, 1979, Fisher completed her training and evaluation period, making her eligible for assignment as a mission specialist on Space Shuttle flight crews, had there been any.

He had earned a Master of Science degree in engineering from the University of Houston and taken flying lessons to make himself more attractive to the program.

[33] Following the one-year basic training program, Fisher was assigned to assist in the design of spacesuits tailored to fit women (called the extra-small Extravehicular Mobility Unit or EMU).

[9] For STS-1, the inaugural orbital spaceflight of the Space Shuttle program and the maiden flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia, Abbey decided that the five MDs of the 1978 and 1980 astronaut selections—Fisher, Seddon and Norman Thagard from the 1978 group, and Bill Fisher and Jim Bagian from the 1980 group—would be assigned to the search and rescue helicopters supporting the flight.

She performed this duty again at Edwards Air Force Base for STS-2, at White Sands again for STS-3 and at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for STS-4.

Hauck was unenthusiastic about this—he wanted his crew to be focused on training for the upcoming mission—but he relented,[33] and Fisher performed CAPCOM duties for STS-9 in November.

Allen would use the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) to fly over to the satellite and place the stinger inside its rocket nozzle.

Fisher would use the Canadarm to grab hold of the fixture and maneuver the satellite into the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle Discovery.

[49] In the weeks and months leading up to the flight, she recorded a series of videos for Kristin so her daughter would know what her mother was like in case she did not come back.

[51] On the second day the crew deployed Telesat Canada's 1,237-kilogram (2,727 lb) Anik D2, an HS 376 communications satellite, using a spring-ejection mechanism.

In the weeks leading up to the mission the satellites' onboard motors had been used to lower their orbit and reduce their spin rate to make it easier for the astronauts to retrieve them.

[52] The crew also operated a Radiation Monitoring Equipment (RME) device and the 3M Company's Diffusive Mixing of Organic Solutions (DMOS) experiment.

[53] Lloyd's of London awarded the crew its silver medal for those who "by extraordinary exertions have contributed to the preservation of property from perils of all kind.

[54] Fisher was named "national mother of the year" by the Father's Day/Mother's Day Council, along with Martha Layne Collins, Clara Hale, Louisa Kennedy, Susan Lucci, Sarah Palfrey, Madge Sinclair and Frederica Von Stade.

In this role she was the crew representative supporting space station development in the areas of training, operations concepts, and the health maintenance facility.

[57] When Fisher returned to the Astronaut Office in 1995, she was assigned to the Operations Planning Branch to work on the procedures and training issues in support of the International Space Station (ISS).

In 2012, she briefly made news when, during the landing of Discovery at Washington's Dulles Airport, where it was being retired to the Smithsonian Institution, she advised an aspiring astronaut to study Russian.

One shot in the series, in which she is turned farthest away from the camera (almost in complete profile), has been frequently posted, shared, and reposted on social media sites including FFFFOUND!,[72] and Reddit.