Portrait of Ellen Baker Courtesy of NASA

Ellen Baker is an American astronaut who was born on April 27, 1953 in North Carolina. Before she became an astronaut she was a geologist and a medical doctor.

Baker joined NASA as a medical officer in 1981. In 1985, she became an astronaut. She has had three space missions and has logged over 686 hours in space.

In 1989, Baker flew aboard space shuttle Atlantis. Baker helped deploy the Galileo spacecraft which went on to explore Jupiter. In 1992, Baker flew aboard the first U.S. Microgravity Lab. For two weeks, the crew studied different sciences in a low gravity environment. In 1995, Baker was part of the first U.S. shuttle crew to dock at the Russian Mir Space Station.