William Anthony "Bill" Oefelein (/ˈoʊfɛlaɪn/; born March 29, 1965) is an American freelance adventure writer and photographer and former NASA astronaut who, on his only spaceflight, piloted the STS-116 Space Shuttle mission.

[2] Oefelein gained media attention on February 5, 2007, when fellow astronaut Lisa Nowak was arrested in Florida and charged with attempting to kidnap his girlfriend, U.S. Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman.

He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University in 1988, where he became a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

[2] In 1988, Oefelein received his commission as an Ensign in the United States Navy from Naval Aviation Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida.

[14] 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.

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.

[17] Shipman and Oefelein exchanged racy e-mails throughout his December 2006 space mission, and he ended his relationship with Nowak in January 2007.