She was the first Native American woman in space, a renowned aviator, a war veteran, and a top student. Nicole Aunapu “Duke” Mann, a native of Penngrove, now holds the distinction of being the first Native American woman to walk on the moon.
In October of last year, Mann led NASA’s most recent expedition to the International Space Station. Since then, Mann and other astronauts and cosmonauts from the United States, Russia, Europe, Canada, and Japan have been circling the Earth.
The first Native American woman to put on a spacesuit and spend time outside of a spacecraft, Mann accomplished a major first on Friday.
The seven-hour project, which started on Friday morning, was captured in exceptional clarity by the astronauts’ helmet cameras and broadcast live on YouTube.
As they worked to build platforms for a new solar array, the footage showed Mann and her partner spacewalker, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency mission expert Koichi Wakata, floating more than 250 miles above a brilliant blue Earth.
“Copy that, Duke,” was a phrase heard several times as Mann checked in with Command Central at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Around 12:30 p.m. Pacific Time, the two spacewalkers returned to the airlock of the space station after finishing their mission. The airlock’s hatch opened to let them out safely after repressurizing.
Mann was born in Petaluma, raised in Penngrove, and attended Rancho Cotate High School in Rohnert Park as a Wailacki member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes. She resides in Houston with her husband and son while she isn’t in low Earth orbit.
In 1999, Mann was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps. Since then, he has flown more than 2,500 hours in 25 different types of aircraft, made 200 carrier arrestments (the abrupt slowing down that occurs when planes land on aircraft carriers), and participated in 47 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On October 5, Mann served as the spacecraft’s commander and led NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission into orbit before docking with the space station about 254 miles above the planet’s surface. Wakata was one of her four crew members, and they were expected to remain at the International Space Station for perhaps another month.
According to data provided by NASA, the International Space Station, a cooperative venture of five space agencies from 15 countries, was first launched in 1998 and currently orbits the Earth at a speed of more than 17,000 mph. It only takes the space station around 90 minutes to complete one full rotation of the Earth, which means it passes through 16 sunrises and sunsets each day, according to NASA.
A Santa Rosa resident named Judy Coffey, whose daughter went to school with Mann, recalls how the budding starlet always appeared headed for the big time.
“What I can remember is she always loved the sky,” Coffey said last October, after Mann successfully completed the flight into space. “She would always talk about the stars and the moon. I can remember that so clearly. She was intrigued by the sky and space when she was 10, 12, 13 years old. It didn’t always make sense to me at the time, but it sure does today.”
