[3] Eugene, a native of Nesmith, South Carolina, used his electronics training from his time in the Navy to get himself a degree from Northeastern University and a long career in electrical engineering for Raytheon, Sprague Electric, and Lockheed Martin,[2][4] while Barbara, from Talbot County, Georgia,[5] worked as a production assistant for Lockheed Martin.

Since she liked to look up at the sky,[7] she interviewed Williams College astronomer Jay Pasachoff,[6] clarifying her potential career interest in space.

Selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate in April 1996, Wilson reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1996.

She then served in the Astronaut Office CAPCOM Branch, working in Mission Control as a prime communicator with on-orbit crews.

On October 18, 2019, Wilson was ground controller at Houston for the first all woman spacewalk by Christina Koch and Jessica Meir.

[13] On December 9, 2020, NASA announced that Stephanie Wilson was among the candidates for the Artemis program, and if selected, she could be both the first woman and the first African-American on the Moon.

[14] However, when NASA decided to return the Boeing Starliner capsule on the Boeing Crew Flight Test uncrewed, Wilson was removed from Crew-9, along with commander and fellow astronaut Zena Cardman, to make room on the return journey for the Starliner astronauts, Barry E. Wilmore and Sunita Williams.

[15] On September 28, 2024, she made a brief appearance during NASA's coverage of the Crew-9 launch, which was co-hosted by Cardman and NASA communicator Derrol Nail, commenting at length during the nearly five-hour broadcast on the experience that her fellow crew members, Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, were going through as they successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Wilson supported robotic arm operations for vehicle inspection, Multi-Purpose Logistics Module installation and EVAs and was responsible for transferring more than 28,000 pounds of supplies and equipment to the ISS.

The crew conducted four spacewalks and performed a previously untested repair method on the station's solar array.

Once docked to the space station, the crew delivered more than 27,000 pounds of hardware, supplies, experiments and equipment, including a tank full of ammonia coolant that required three spacewalks and robotics to install, new crew sleeping quarters, a window observation facility and a freezer for experiments.

For the return to Earth, Wilson robotically installed Leonardo, which was packed with more than 6,000 pounds of hardware, science results and used supplies, inside Discovery's payload bay.