Next Stop: Space for Ariz. Wing's Proctor

Maj. Margot Myers
Public Affairs Officer
Arizona Wing

Ask her what she’s doing this summer, and Maj. Sian Proctor will tell you she’s “learning to fly a Dragon to space.”

Proctor, a member of the Arizona Wing’s Sky Harbor Composite Squadron, will be the mission pilot on the privately funded Inspiration4 flight aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. She is an active contributor to the Arizona Wing Aerospace Education team, a professor at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, a geoscientist, an analog astronaut and a space artist and poet. Proctor was selected recently as a member of the Explorers Club 50: Fifty People Changing the World the World Needs to Know About.

The commander of the Inspiration4 flight is Jared Isaacman, a pilot and billionaire businessman who’s paying an undisclosed amount for the mission, designed to raise awareness and funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Proctor won a spot on the crew in a competition for small businesses that are customers of Isaacman’s company, through her space art website, Space2Inspire.

The flight name – Inspiration4 – commemorates the four-person crew and its associated "pillars of support” for the hospital. Isaacman represents leadership. Proctor represents prosperity. Hayley Arceneaux, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, represents hope. Chris Sembroski, a former U.S. Air Force missileman and data scientist, represents generosity.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle with the Dragon capsule is scheduled to lift off in mid-September from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission will last three days while the Dragon capsule, named Resilience, orbits the Earth at 335 miles, about 75 miles higher than the International Space Station.

When notified of her selection, Proctor told The Associated Press, “It was like when Harry Potter found out he was a wizard, a little bit of shock and awe.”

Proctor applied three times to NASA’s astronaut corps and came close to selection in 2009. As an analog astronaut, she has participated in four simulated Earth-based missions, pursuing space-related exploration in Hawaii, Utah and Poland.

According to Proctor’s website, analog astronauts engage in a wide range of research such as human physiology, psychology, crew cohesion, exercise and nutritional studies along with testing cutting-edge science, technology and engineering applications. Analog missions are recognized by NASA and are seen as an important part of space exploration.

“Ever since I can remember, I have loved airplanes, just looking up at the sky,” Proctor said. “I was always fascinated by military aircraft and built models of them. I watched a lot of World War II movies. My dad always encouraged me to follow my passion.”

Proctor was born on Guam, where her father worked at the NASA space tracking station during the Apollo missions. She writes on her website, “I grew up admiring Neil Armstrong's autograph to my father on his office wall … I really want to continue my father's legacy of advancing human spaceflight … I want to be the first Black female commercial astronaut.”

Proctor’s father encouraged her to join Civil Air Patrol when she was 13 or 14. “My dad, who knew I wanted to be a military aviator and go to the Air Force Academy, told me about the Civil Air Patrol and asked me if I wanted to join,” Proctor recalls. “I became a member of the Rochester Composite Squadron in New York, and it was fantastic.

“I was in CAP for a couple of years. I went to encampment in upstate New York at Plattsburgh Air Force Base in the summer of 1987, before my senior year. I also remember getting to go on a field trip to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Those were the first times I ever traveled on my own.”

Mike Dardzinski was a cadet officer in the Rochester squadron when Proctor joined. When asked if he recalls his first impressions of her, he replied with a list that includes passion, discipline, confidence, kindness and curiosity.

“She was not a normal teenager,” Dardzinski said. “She was very special. She was not tuned in to the things kids cared about, but clearly driven, and I remember her passion for flight and space even now.

“Sian was absolutely interested in flying, and I remember talking to her about it. I had already started training in Cessnas and was working to earn my navigator credentials. I know she took part in a number of flight-related events and outings, including at nearby Air Force bases,” he said.

“I remember the first time I got to fly and also flying in a Huey helicopter; those things really left an impression with me,” Proctor said. “Civil Air Patrol was the first stepping stone for me on the way to this path, my love of aviation and aerospace.”

After a couple of years in CAP, everything changed for Proctor. “Going into my senior year, I had to get glasses, so I knew I wasn’t going to be able to be a military aviator. That changed the course of my life,” she said.

“I wish someone had told me that I could have still gone to a military academy, that you don’t have to be a pilot, but I saw everything that way. With my dad getting sick (with cancer), I dropped out of CAP, and I didn’t run track that year. It felt like everything had changed.”

Instead of a service academy, Proctor attended Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental science. Her graduate studies later led to a master’s degree in geology and a doctoral degree in curriculum and instruction: science education. She spent 21 years at South Mountain Community College teaching geology, sustainability and planetary science.

Arizona Wing members, especially cadets, have benefited from presentations in which Proctor shares her passion for science, space and exploration. She said she wants to give back to a program she valued as a teenager and remains committed to as an adult.

“When I became an adult and got my wings, I decided that I wanted to give back and volunteer,” Proctor said, “so I rejoined the Civil Air Patrol in 2010 at the old Glendale Composite Squadron 308, which no longer exists. I was the aerospace education officer and won the Air Force Association Frank Luke Chapter Teacher of the Year award in 2012.”

Proctor recalls two meaningful activities from that time.

She attended a CAP Aerospace Education Academy in Pensacola, Florida. “I wanted to increase my knowledge and skills as an aerospace educator,” she said. “That’s one of the things I love about CAP: it gives me an opportunity to give back but also enables me to grow by providing me with all of these rich experiences, to be able to make myself better.”