K. Megan McArthur

McArthur was born in Honolulu, Hawaii but grew up in Northern California.[2] She dreamed of being an astronaut when she was a teenager. She attended London Central High School and graduated from St. Francis High School in Mountain View, California, then later earned a B.S. degree in aerospace engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1993. In 2002, she was awarded a Ph.D. in oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.[2]

At the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, McArthur conducted graduate research in nearshore underwater acoustic propagation and digital signal processing.[2] Her research focused on determining geoacoustic models to describe very shallow water waveguides using measured transmission loss data in a genetic algorithm inversion technique. She served as chief scientist during at-sea data collection operations and has planned and led diving operations during sea-floor instrument deployments and sediment-sample collections. While at Scripps, she participated in a range of in-water instrument testing, deployment, maintenance, and recovery, and collection of marine plants, animals, and sediment. During this time, McArthur also volunteered at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps, conducting educational demonstrations for the public from inside a 70,000-gallon (265 m³) exhibit tank of the California Kelp Forest.

Selected as a mission specialist by NASA in July 2000, McArthur reported for training in August 2000.[2] She trained at the Carter training facility. Following the completion of two years of training and evaluation, she was assigned to the Astronaut Office Shuttle Operations Branch working technical issues on shuttle systems in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL). McArthur then served as the Crew Support Astronaut for the Expedition 9 Crew during their six-month mission aboard the International Space Station. She also worked in the Space Station and Space Shuttle Mission Control Centers as a Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM). In 2006, McArthur was the capsule communicator (capcom) for STS-116. She was also the EVA capcom for the STS-117 mission in 2007.

McArthur, STS-125 mission specialist, works the controls of the remote manipulator system (RMS) on the aft flight deck of the Earth-orbiting Space Shuttle Atlantis during flight day eight activities.

Megan McArthur was a member of the STS-125 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. McArthur was the ascent and entry flight engineer and was the lead robotics crew member for the mission. The mission which lasted almost 13 days[2] was McArthur's first trip into space. In a pre-flight interview, she put it as: "I'll be the last one with hands on the Hubble Space Telescope."[3]

In 2019, McArthur was appointed Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office.

In July 2020, NASA announced that McArthur will fly into space for the second time on SpaceX Crew-2, along with NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, all three of whom are Amateur Radio Operators.[4][5][6]

McArthur is married to fellow astronaut Bob Behnken, and they have one son.[7]

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

• NASA biography of K. Megan McArthur March 2016
• Spacefacts biography of K. Megan McArthur