Space triangle

Jealousy brought NASA astronaut to handcuffs

American astronauts have once again given Hollywood a story worthy of being immortalized on film produced by the world's dream factory. The report from the Orlando airport police station about the arrest and charging of astronaut Lisa Marie Novak with assault on a person can be considered a scenario application. In this document, without even trying too hard, you can find a complete set of “ingredients” necessary to create a full-fledged drama: the story of a woman who, through hard work, has made an excellent career in the army and NASA, a mortal risk in the name of her homeland, a midlife crisis, the struggle of earthly love and love to the stars, broken hearts, rivals in a love triangle, a car race through six states. There is only a serious problem with a happy ending - because this loud scandal has every chance of ending not only in court proceedings, but also in organizational conclusions from the National Aerospace Agency, which in its administrative practice rarely follows film canons.

But first, about the canons of police officers. The record says matter-of-factly that 43-year-old Lisa Marie Novak was detained after the station received a complaint from 45-year-old US Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman, who said that in the parking lot of Orlando International Airport a woman tried to break into her car and managed to spray into the car. through the slightly open glass with tear gas from a canister. During Novak’s arrest, in addition to this canister, other, as police believe, crime weapons were found. In particular, an air pistol, a new knife with a 10-centimeter blade, a rubber hose, several plastic bags, six rubber gloves, a wig, a long raincoat. All this was in a large black bag, which the woman, identified by Shipman as the offender, tried to throw into the trash container. Lisa Novak was handcuffed and taken to the police station. Police say the woman poses a clear threat to society and ask the court not to release her on bail. They are preparing to charge her with several charges at once - for attempting to kidnap a person, attempting to break into someone else's car, causing damage and attempting to destroy evidence. Although, in fact, the main evidence that sheds light was found not in the trash, but in Novak’s car, left at a distance from the scene of the incident - there was a romantic letter from the astronaut to her squad colleague Bill Oefelein and printouts of emails to him from Colleen Shipman . Classic love triangle...

But Lisa Novak could become the prototype of the heroine for a completely different film - just with a real happy ending. Last July, when she made her first flight on the Discovery shuttle as a specialist and operator of the shuttle's mechanical arm, the space mission also developed according to very Hollywood canons. The ship, symbolically launched on US Independence Day, encountered all the problems that have already become traditional for shuttles: damage to the thermal insulation lining, a leak of liquid nitrogen in one of the generators responsible for the operation of the flaps, disgusting weather at Cape Canaveral. But the crew demonstrated composure and restraint and successfully returned to earth, thereby confirming that NASA engineers were able to eliminate the fatal errors that led to the death of the space shuttle Columbia in February 2003. The astronauts, including Novak, essentially re-opened the path to space for the shuttle. The flight, which NASA calls historic, did not yet seem to be the pinnacle of the career of US Navy Capt. Lisa Marie Novak, who made her way into the astronaut corps in 1996 and then spent 10 years preparing to fly to the stars. But already on earth she lacked composure and restraint. Now she is not a national hero, not a role model for all American puritans - a happy wife and mother of three children, but a figure in crime chronicles.

She did not fly with pilot Bill Oefelein; he went into space on the same Discovery in December. But a couple of weeks spent together in 2002 at an Arctic astronaut training camp in Canada seemed to be the point that turned Lisa Novak’s life upside down. During police interrogation, she explained that their relationship was “more than business, but less than romantic.” Even the dumbest of cops wouldn’t believe this - only real passion can make a woman drop everything, get into a car and drive one and a half thousand kilometers in one sitting just to grab hold of her rival.

However, the police seem to be generally in a state of shock - they know that the rage of a woman driven by jealousy in Lisa Novak was combined with the methodical nature of a person accustomed to calculating every step. In her black bag they found a sheet of paper with a list of contents - she had carefully planned the purchase of a gun, a hose, and bags of gloves. Before getting behind the wheel, she put on the diapers used by astronauts, so as not to be distracted by pee-stops; her physical fitness was enough to cover the path from Houston (Texas) to Orlando (Florida) almost without stopping and meet Shipman is there...

NASA is now experiencing no less shock - after all, for the first time in history, an active member of the astronaut corps has been arrested. The American media quote the helpless remarks of representatives of the aerospace agency, as if repeating a mantra that there is nothing to comment on yet. NASA is waiting to meet with a high-ranking officer from the Orlando Police Department, who is scheduled to fly to Houston specifically. Until the situation becomes clearer, Lisa Marie Novak will remain on the squad's staff. On March 15, she was supposed to fly into space for the second time.

Fedor Serebryansky