First Female Shuttle Boss

Veteran shuttle pilot Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a space shuttle mission, said Wednesday she's proud of her role but insisted gender did not help or hinder her advancement through NASA's traditionally male-dominated astronaut corps.

"I'm honored to be the first woman to have an opportunity to command the shuttle," Collins told reporters at the base of launch pad 39B. "I started as a pilot in the military back in 1978 and things have changed as far as the available jobs that women are able to apply for and be accepted into."

As for how she's fared since joining NASA nearly 10 years ago, Collins said "you don't go to work thinking you're different because you're a woman and you might be treated differently. It just doesn't happen that way. We are so focused on the mission those things just don't enter the picture and that's the way it should be."

Collins and her crewmates - pilot Jeffrey Ashby, flight engineer-astronomer Steven Hawley, Catherine "Cady" Coleman and French astronaut Michel Tognini - are tentatively scheduled for blastoff aboard the shuttle Columbia at 12:36 a.m. on July 20, the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

CBS News Space Consultant Bill Harwood reports that the goal of the 95th shuttle mission, the second of five flights planned for 1999, is deployment of the $1.5 billion Chandra X-ray Observatory, the third of four so-called "Great Observatories" NASA is launching to study the universe across the electromagnetic spectrum.

If all goes well, Chandra and its two-stage solid-fuel booster will be released from a cradle in Columbia's cargo bay at 7:53 a.m. on July 20, seven hours and 17 minutes after launch. One hour later, the first stage of Chandra's $70 million Boeing-built Inertial Upper Stage booster will fire to begin the spacecraft's trip to a high elliptical orbit with a low point of about 6,000 miles and a high point of some 87,000 miles.

Once on station, Chandra will study some of the most violent objects in the universe, from black holes to quasars, by recording X-rays that cannot penetrate Earth's atmosphere.

For good or ill, Collins' role as the first female shuttle commander is generating much more media interest than usual. Her crewmates, at least, say she's handled the added pressure with style.

"Certainly, there's a lot of attention focused on Eileen's assignment as commander and the milestone it represents in our country's history in the progression of women," Ashby said. "I think that's wonderful. Eileen is a very easy person to work for and has made me feel very comfortable and treated me not like a rookie but as somebody who has flown before and I really respect her for that."

Added Coleman: "Eileen's just trying to do her job. At the same time, I'm actually very excited about the historical significance, not for me, not for Eileen, but for the little girls out there."

Originaly scheduled for launch last August, Chandra's flight has been repeatedly delayed because of a series of technical problems.

NASA moved the latest launch target up to July 20 to provide as much time as possible to get Columbia off the ground before the Eastern Range shuts down in August for upgrades and maintenance. Complicating the picture, Columbia itself is overdue for regular maintenance, upgrades and structural inspections at a Boeing facility in Palmdale, Calif.

If the shuttle isn't off the ground by mid August, officials say, the launch could be delayed to late 2000.