Whitman alumna Dorothy M. Metcalf-Lindenburger ’97 will launch from the Kennedy Space Center on the space shuttle Discovery at 6:21 a.m. EDT on April 5 for a 13-day mission aboard the International Space Station.

Metcalf-Lindenburger, a geology major, began astronaut training in February 2006 and is Whitman’s first astronaut alumna. During the flight, Metcalf-Lindenburger will serve as one of the crew’s five mission specialists. Her duties include being at the flight deck during spacewalks to guide other astronauts through the procedure and to ensure their safety.

Metcalf-Lindenburger, along with crew members James Dutton and Naoko Yamazaki, is one of the final three rookie astronauts in the space shuttle program. Their mission, STS-131, is the penultimate mission for Discovery and the fourth-to-last for the space shuttle program.

Live coverage of the launch will be broadcast on the NASA website at nasa.gov/ntv.

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Here’s what Metcalf-Lindenburger had to say about Whitman in her official preflight interview:

“After I graduated from high school I went to Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. It’s a small liberal arts school in the middle of pretty much nowhere, in like a wheat field, and that was a really great place for me to learn, away from distractions. I went there with the intention of actually studying math like my mom, but I took a geology course my freshman year, and I thoroughly enjoyed it and decided that’s what I was going to major in. So, I majored in geology, and spent a lot of time out in the field, did research outside of Yellowstone, and then did my senior thesis outside of Canyon City in Colorado in the Wet Mountains. Both of those were real different research projects. One was mapping the last glaciation in Yellowstone and the other was mapping 2.5 billion year old rocks. Pretty different, but those were some really great opportunities that I could be afforded at a small school like that.”