K. Megan McArthur

McArthur was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, but grew up in California. She attended London Central High School and graduated from St. Francis High School in Mountain View, California, then later earned a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1993. In 2002, she was awarded a Ph.D. in oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. ==Oceanography career==

At the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, McArthur conducted graduate research in nearshore underwater acoustic propagation and digital signal processing. Her research focused on determining geoacoustic models to describe very shallow water waveguides using measured transmission loss data in a genetic algorithm inversion technique. She served as chief scientist during at-sea data collection operations and has planned and led diving operations during sea-floor instrument deployments and sediment-sample collections. While at Scripps, she participated in a range of in-water instrument testing, deployment, maintenance, and recovery, and collection of marine plants, animals, and sediment. During this time, McArthur also volunteered at Birch Aquarium, conducting educational demonstrations for the public from inside a 70,000-gallon (265 m³) exhibit tank of the California Kelp Forest. ==NASA career==

Selected as a mission specialist by NASA in July 2000, McArthur reported for training in August 2000. STS-125 during flight day eight activities. In 2009, Megan McArthur was a member of the STS-125 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. McArthur was the ascent and entry flight engineer and was the lead robotics crew member for the mission. The mission which lasted almost 13 days In 2019, McArthur was appointed Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office. Expedition 65/66 '' (1950) by Ruth Stiles Gannett on board the International Space Station, 265 miles above the northern Atlantic Ocean in August 2021. In July 2020, NASA announced that McArthur would fly into space for the second time on SpaceX Crew-2, along with NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet. She used the same seat inside the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour which her husband, Bob Behnken used in SpaceX Demo-2, the first mission of the Endeavour capsule. Crew-2 launched and docked with the ISS in April 2021, beginning their 6 month mission. It splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico in November 2021. ==Awards and honors==

In 2022, SpaceX's Dragon former support vessel GO Searcher was renamed Megan along with GO Navigator as Shannon after SpaceX Crew-1 astronaut, Shannon Walker. A SpaceX fairing recovery/droneship support vessel was named after her husband as Bob in 2021. In 2021, McArthur was selected as a Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst. == Personal life ==

McArthur is married to fellow astronaut Bob Behnken, and they have one son. She appeared as an animated version of herself in seasons 4 and 7 of Blaze and the Monster Machines. ==References==