Shuttle astronaut collapses during welcome home ceremony

(23 Sep 2006) SHOTLIST
Ellington Field, Houston, Texas - 22 September 2006
1. Astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper speaking at welcome home ceremony, begins to sway and collapses. She is supported, then lowered to floor by fellow crew members.
2. Cutaways of audience, pull back to wide - applauding
3. SOUNDUP: (English) Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Astronaut:
"Boy if that's not a little embarrassing."
4. Cutaway of Atlantis crew patch
5. Astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper speaking, collapses again and is lowered to the ground
File: Lyndon B Johnson Space Centre, Houston, Texas - Unknown Date
6. Various of Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper training
7. Various of Atlantis crew posing for pictures in front of NASA jets
STORYLINE:
An astronaut collapsed twice Friday, a day after she returned to Earth in the shuttle Atlantis, and officials attributed her wobbles to the adjustment from 12 days at zero gravity.
Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper left the welcome-home ceremony at the hangar at Ellington Field, in Houston, Texas, but was not taken to a hospital.
NASA officials and her husband Glenn Piper both said she was doing fine.
Piper blamed his wife's collapse on the combination of effects from her recent return, a relatively warm hangar and the excitement of the ceremony.
Piper, the fifth of the six astronauts to speak, appeared to be confused before her legs buckled during her address.
NASA officials and crew members braced her and lowered her to the ground. She stood up again, and the crowd applauded.
"Boy, if that's not a little embarrassing," she said.
After speaking for another 30 seconds or so, she again appeared confused and gripped the podium before starting to collapse. Fellow crew members stepped to her side and lowered her to the floor.
Two NASA officials then helped her leave through a side door, and she was allowed to return home by early afternoon, according to Smith Johnston, the crew's flight surgeon, who was at Piper's side when she fell.
Astronauts typically lose 10 percent to 14 percent of their blood volume while in space, usually regaining it in a day or two, Johnston said.
The Atlantis crew returned to Earth on Thursday after performing the first construction work on the International Space Station since the Columbia disaster three-and-a-half years ago.
They performed three gruelling spacewalks to hook up a seventeen-and-a-half-ton addition, which included a giant set of electricity-producing solar panels.
Piper, 43, of St. Paul, Minnesota, is a US Navy Commander and was a mission specialist and cosmic electrician aboard the shuttle.
She carried out two of the spacewalks, joining an elite club of only six other US women and a single Russian woman who have walked in space.

#Heidemarie #astronaut #collapses
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