When astronaut love goes bad: Lisa Nowak arrested

By Zachary Drake - February 06, 2007

Ah Love, you can be cruel! Cruel enough to turn the upstanding astronaut on the left into the desperate criminal on the right (Photo stolen from FOXNews).

UPDATE: She's been charged with attempted first-degree murder. Of course her Wikipedia entry is up-to-date. The family has issued a statement. Apparently she and her husband separated a few weeks ago. She's been released on bond. Of course there's a media frenzy. Even Internal Monologue is seeing a massive traffic spike.

I can't make too much sense out of this (HT Grishnash, who says he's not surprised Oefelein's connected with this):

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- An astronaut drove 900 miles and donned a disguise to confront a woman she believed was her rival for the affections of a space shuttle pilot, police said. She was arrested Monday and charged with attempted kidnapping and other counts.

U.S. Navy Capt. Lisa Nowak, 43, who flew last July on a shuttle mission to the international space station, was also charged with attempted vehicle burglary with battery, destruction of evidence and battery. She was denied bail.

Apparently Nowak was carrying some weird stuff when arrested:

During a check of the parking lot, an officer followed Nowak and watched her throw away a bag containing the wig and BB gun. They also found a steel mallet, a 4-inch folding knife, rubber tubing, $600 and garbage bags inside a bag Nowak was carrying when she was arrested, authorities said.

There's gotta be more to learn. I trust Grishnash will keep me posted. You do have to ask yourself though: Is this Oefelein guy worth it?

(Photo stolen from the same place.)

Comments

grishnash said…

I should clarify that my "not surprise" was not due to any moral judgment on William Oefelein's character or anything. As I was compiling my notes on STS-116, I noted that a lot of his biographical information had been pulled off the web fairly recently, which seemed to indicate that there was some domestic situation relating to him. But there was no reason to expect anything like this.

It's surprising in that it takes a lot of dedication, intelligence and discipline to be an astronaut, and that wasn't on display here (although maybe the dedication aspect was).

Nowak is now on 30-day leave and off mission status, meaning that she won't participate either as a crew member or with mission support on the ground for the foreseeable future. She was not scheduled to fly any missions in the next year, but she'd worked CAPCOM previously, and may have been in line for those duties again on an upcoming mission.

7:11 AM, February 07, 2007