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Astronaut Williams donates long locks to charity
2006-12-22
When space shuttle Discovery returns to Earth today as expected, it will be carrying a special gift from astronaut Sunita Williams to an ailing child: her ponytail. Earlier this month, the shuttle ferried Williams to the International Space Station, an orbiting laboratory where she'll live for six months. There, astronaut Joan Higginbotham snipped off the black mane that cascaded down Williams' back. The hair was loaded onto the shuttle and will be made into a wig for a child suffering from hair loss because of chemotherapy or medical problems. "We're so excited," says Madonna Coffman, president of Locks of Love, the group that will receive Williams' hair. The high-profile donation "will bring in families who may not have known about us," Coffman says. WANT TO HELP?Learn how to donate hair to Locks of Love Long hair is a nuisance aboard the station, which has no shower and no gravity to keep tresses hanging neatly in place. Williams grew out her hair for months in anticipation of donating it, says her mother, Bonnie Pandya. Pandya's 41-year-old daughter is married and has no children. Williams "loves kids … and tries to do as much as she can for them," Pandya says. A haircut in space requires careful planning to keep snippets from floating into machinery. Higginbotham used clippers attached to a hose, which was connected to the station's vacuum system. She cut Williams' hair at the base of the neck, leaving the top and sides intact. Williams' hair is so thick and sticks out so much in zero gravity that in photographs it's hard to tell any hair is gone. Only two other women have lived on the space station. The first, Susan Helms, had shoulder-length hair. The second, Peggy Whitson, wore hers closely cropped. Long hair in space can be a liability because the strands float, seemingly with a life of their own. In his memoir, Riding Rockets, former astronaut Mike Mullane writes that crewmate Judith Resnik's hair got snarled in a movie camera, jamming it, while in orbit in 1984. Resnik, who was then making the second flight in space by a U.S. woman, was so worried about criticism that she insisted Mission Control not be told why the camera had stopped, Mullane writes. Two years later, Resnik died in the Challenger explosion. Even locks restrained by a rubber band can cause trouble. On Discovery's flight in July, astronaut Lisa Nowak's ponytail got stuck to the Velcro on the ship's ceiling. It was "very uncomfortable for her," said Steven Lindsey, Discovery's commander. "But I just couldn't help myself. I started cracking up."
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