[7] She expressed an early interest in becoming a pilot, subscribing to Air Force Magazine and reading books about World War II-era military aviators such as Fate Is the Hunter and God Is My Co-Pilot.

The family home was badly damaged by flooding caused by Hurricane Agnes in June 1972, and with finances tight, she was able to convince her mother to allow her to transfer to Elmira Free Academy, a public high school.

[13][14] In 1975, the United States Air Force (USAF) changed its policy to allow women to train as pilots, although only for non-combat missions.

The first ten women chosen for pilot training in September 1976 were all serving Air Force officers with four-year college degrees.

[17] In January 1978, Collins received orders to report to Offutt Air Force Base upon graduation from Syracuse, to become a computer systems engineer.

Collins eagerly accepted the offer, but a physical examination at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base revealed that although she had 20/20 visual acuity in her right eye, she had only 20/25 in the left, leading to her being rejected.

This involved four weeks of pilot instructor training, which was conducted at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

[32] From August 1986 to June 1989, Collins was assigned to the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado, where she was an assistant professor in mathematics, teaching courses on calculus and linear algebra, and a T-41 instructor pilot.

Youngs eventually left the USAF to fly as a commercial pilot for Delta Air Lines, thereby giving himself the flexibility to follow Collins as her career progressed.

[39] At Edwards she flew several types of aircraft, including the Lockheed TR-1, P-3 Orion, and C-130 Hercules, the de Havilland Canada UV-18 Twin Otter, the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker, Cessna A-37 Dragonfly, Learjet 24, Beechcraft King Air, General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon, and F-111, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, Vought A-7 Corsair II, and the Goodyear Blimp.

[45] NASA convened a selection board chaired by the Director of Flight Crew Operations, Don Puddy, which also included Carolyn Huntoon, the Director of Life Sciences; Joseph Atkinson, the Chief of Equal Opportunity Programs;[44] and astronauts John Young, Charles Bolden, Hoot Gibson, Rhea Seddon, Jerry Ross, and Mary Cleave.

[46] In September 1989, Collins received a call from Duane Ross, the selection board's administrative officer, inviting her to come to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) with the second of five groups of hopefuls for a week of interviews, examinations, medical evaluations, and orientation, commencing on 2 October 1989.

She knew one other member of the group well: Susan Helms had been a fellow assistant professor at the Air Force Academy and graduate student at Stanford.

[53] After nine months in this assignment, Collins was sent to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida as an astronaut support person (ASP), also known as a Cape Crusader.

[62][63] In preparation for the mission, Collins completed one hundred hours of Russian language classroom training, but she usually relied on Precourt translating for her.

The crew traveled to Star City to study Mir's systems and had dinner at the home of Kondakova and her husband, cosmonaut Valeri Ryumin, now the president of Energia, the Russian space agency.

Collins had heard of the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF) and indicated to the Chief of the Astronaut Office, Bob Cabana, that she was interested in flying the mission to deploy it.

This would be the first time that a woman commanded a Space Shuttle mission, so the official announcement of her assignment was made by the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on 5 March 1998.

Originally, Winston Scott was to be the second mission specialist, but NASA headquarters wanted an astronomer with experience with the inertial upper stage (IUS) that would deploy the AXAF.

Her fears proved groundless; Hawley offered wisdom and advice but made no attempt to interfere with Collins's command of the mission.

This pushed the launch date back to April and then to July, when Columbia was scheduled for fifteen months' maintenance in Palmdale, California.

[73] Two of the five pairs of tanks holding hydrogen and oxygen for the fuel cells were removed, as was the robotic arm, so any problems had to be resolved in the payload bay, as the Chandra could not be retrieved.

As a result, the orbit reached was 7 miles (11 km) lower than intended but the situation could have been much worse; the engine problem was caused by a pin that had come loose and struck the nozzle, rupturing three liquid hydrogen coolant tubes.

Some 1,100 cubic feet (31 m3) of supplies would be transferred to the ISS from the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, which would then be filled with experiments, equipment that was no longer required, and garbage to be returned to Earth.

Three spacewalks were scheduled, to install an external stowage platform on the ISS Quest Joint Airlock and to replace a gyroscope that had failed.

[82][83] Problems discovered with the propellant feed lines on Atlantis and then on Discovery in June 2002 led to the entire Space Shuttle fleet being grounded again until October, pushing the launch date back to 6 March 2003.

This was necessary so the astronauts aboard the ISS could take photographs of Discovery's belly to ensure there was no threat from debris-related damage to the orbiter upon reentry.

[1] After her retirement from the USAF and NASA, Collins served on the Board of Directors of USAA, a San Antonio banking and insurance company, from 2006 to 2021.

[20][105] She addressed the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, on 20 July 2016,[106] leading to speculation that Donald Trump might appoint her NASA administrator.

[122] An astronomical observatory—the Eileen Collins Observatory run by Corning Community College—is named in her honor,[123] as is the main entrance boulevard to Syracuse Hancock International Airport.