By O’Dell Isaac | Colorado Springs Gazette
A Woodland Park High School and Air Force Academy alum is currently representing the Pikes Peak region in space.
Air Force Maj. Nichole “Vapor” Ayers, a 2011 academy graduate, served as the pilot on a SpaceX capsule that launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, bound for the International Space Station. The capsule, which carried Ayers and three other astronauts, successfully docked into the ISS on Sunday.
The mission was part of a NASA crew swap that allowed astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who had been on the orbiting space lab for nine months, to return home. Williams and Wilmore, both retired Navy test pilots, were scheduled to depart the ISS on Wednesday along with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
The SpaceX Crew 10 mission was Ayers’ first space flight, according to her NASA bio.