Astronaut to address hospital staff

Rhea Seddon (NASA Johnson Space Center web site) [Click to enlarge]

Former NASA astronaut Dr. Rhea Seddon is coming to Shelbyville next month.

The Murfreesboro native is scheduled to speak only to the medical staff at Bedford County Medical Center on June 9.

Seddon will speak about how her experience in the space program has been applied to health care, according to Dr. Bill Russell, chief of staff at BCMC.

"She just happened to be an intern when I was chief resident" at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Memphis, Russell said. "She was pursuing a surgical residency when she was chosen" by NASA to be an astronaut.

Seddon became an astronaut in August 1979, reports Vanderbilt University Medical Center spokesman John Howser. Seddon is the assistant chief medical officer for the Vanderbilt Medical Group of 900 doctors.

Seddon has traveled in space three times: April 1985, June 1991 and October 1993.

"As a mission specialist, she did a lot of experiments," Russell said.

Howser said those experiments included exploration of how humans, animals and cells respond to micro-gravity and readapt to Earth's gravity. That experiment was conducted on the Space Shuttle Columbia, the spacecraft that years later disintegrated upon re-entry.

On her last space flight, 12 years ago, Seddon's experiments included investigations into the effects of weightlessness on balance, coordination, the heart, blood vessels and the heart and lungs, Howser said. NASA astronauts conducted medical experiments on themselves and on rats during that flight.

Seddon retired from NASA in 1997.

She is married to Robert L. "Hoot" Gibson who, while a NASA astronaut, traveled in space seven times. After retiring from NASA, he became a Southwest Airlines pilot.

The couple lives in Murfreesboro.