Lieutenant General Susan J. Helms

• Former Commander, Joint Functional Component Command for Space, US Strategic Command, and 14th Air Force, Air Force Space Command
• Former Commander, 45th Space Wing, Cape Canaveral, FL
• Former NASA Astronaut
• Former Air Force Flight Test Engineer

Lieutenant General Susan J. Helms, United States Air Force (USAF) (Ret.), is currently an independent consultant and the Principal of Orbital Visions, LLC. She has served on several boards, including the Board of Trustees for The Aerospace Corporation, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. 

General Helms has almost thirty-six years of military service in the USAF. In her last assignment, she was Commander of the 14th Air Force, Air Force Space Command and Commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Space, US Strategic Command at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. As the leader of the USAF’s operational space component, General Helms led more than 20,500 personnel responsible for providing missile warning, space superiority, space situational awareness, satellite operations, space launch, and range operations. As Commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Space she directed all assigned and attached space forces providing tailored, responsive, local, and global space effects in support of national and combatant commander objectives.

General Helms was commissioned from the USAF Academy in 1980 and is a distinguished graduate of the USAF Test Pilot School (Flight Test Engineer Course). She has served as an F-15 and F-16 weapons separation engineer and as a flight test engineer for the CF-18. She has also commanded the 45th Space Wing of Patrick Air Force Base at Cape Canaveral, Florida and served as the J5 of the US Strategic Command. 

Selected by NASA in January 1990, General Helms became an astronaut in July 1991. On January 13, 1993, then an Air Force Major and a member of the Space Shuttle Endeavour crew, she became the first US military woman in space. She flew on STS-54 (1993), STS-64 (1994), STS-78 (1996), and STS-101 (2000), and she served aboard the ISS as a member of the Expedition-2 crew (2001). A veteran of five space flights, General Helms has logged 211 days in space, including a spacewalk of 8 hours and 56 minutes, a world record. She was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2011.