Dee O'Hara

O'Hara participated in every launch in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. After Skylab, she was also invited to participate in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Program (ASTP) and the first shuttle flight in 1981. During her time as the Astronaut's Nurse, she received a lot of fan mail.

In 1974, O'Hara moved to the Ames Research Center where she managed the Human Research Facility until her retirement in 1997. Among her projects, she was in charge of bed rest studies which discovered physiological parallels between bed rest and spaceflight conditions, findings that were foundational for ground-based studies of astronaut orbital health.

Between 1971 and 1974 O'Hara was the manager of the Medical Operations Division in the Flight Medicine Branch until moving to Ames Research Center. She was involved in the decision to ground astronaut Ken Mattingly from Apollo 13 due to the concern he might have contracted German measles.

O'Hara resigned from the US Air Force in 1964, in order to move to the manned space center (later the Johnson Space Center) to set up the Medicine Flight Clinic.

In 1964, she moved to Houston to set up the Flight Medicine Clinic at the Johnson Space Center. She was the Occupational Health Nurse until 1967, and the manager of the Preventive Medicine Office between 1967 and 1971.

In May 1959, O'Hara was assigned to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in support of the Mercury Program. In 1963 she was officially assigned as the Office Nurse in Cocoa Beach, Florida.

In November 1959, O'Hara became the first Staff Nurse of the Mercury Program. Her job was to set up the Aeromed Lab, the crew sleeping quarters, the exam area for the astronauts in Hangar S, and be with them as their nurse. Colonel George Knauf, Center Commander of Patrick Air Force Base wanted to have a nurse in the Mercury program team because he thought the astronauts would be more likely to share information with the staff nurse than with the flight surgeon who could ground them. Also, the nurse would be around enough to identify when they are not feeling well.

Dolores B. "Dee" O'Hara (born August 9, 1935, in Nampa, Idaho) was the first aerospace nurse to NASA's first astronauts, laying the foundation to the field of Space nursing. O'Hara was the official nurse to the Mercury Seven astronauts and their families, continuing to support the Gemini Program, Apollo astronauts and Skylab.

O'Hara was born on August 9, 1935, in Nampa, Idaho. In 1956 graduated from the Providence Hospital School of Nursing in Portland, Oregon. After graduation, between 1956 - 1957 O'Hara completed coursework in Operating Room Technique in the University of Oregon. She worked as a surgical nurse at the University of Oregon Medical School. Because of back problems, she moved on to work with three diagnosticians in Portland, Oregon, and learned how to do lab work and X-rays.