William Oefelein

William Oefelein is one of those figures who became famous for entirely the wrong reasons — and honestly, I feel a little bad for the guy. He piloted the STS-116 shuttle mission in December 2006, which is a genuinely impressive achievement: a Navy test pilot turned NASA astronaut who flew one of the most complex vehicles ever built. That should be his legacy. Instead, his name is forever attached to the 2007 Lisa Nowak affair, when a fellow astronaut drove hundreds of miles in a diaper to confront his girlfriend — making international headlines that had nothing to do with anything Oefelein himself did. He seemed to handle the chaos with quiet dignity, eventually left NASA, and rebuilt his life as a freelance adventure writer and photographer in Alaska. As comebacks go, trading the shuttle for wilderness storytelling is actually pretty cool.

Name (English)

William Oefelein

Name (Japanese)

ウィリアム・オーフェリン

Reading

うぃりあむ・おーふぇりん

Born

March 29, 1965 (age 61)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aries / Snake

Origin

Fort Belvoir, Virginia, United States

Occupation

military officer / astronaut / aircraft pilot / engineer

High school

West Anchorage High School

University

University of Tennessee

Awards & achievements

• Air Medal

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A6%E3%82%A3%E3%83%AA%E3%82%A2%E3%83%A0%E3%83%BB%E3%82%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%95%E3%82%A7%E3%83%AA%E3%83%B3

Tags

• Virginia
• military officer
• astronaut
• aircraft pilot

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.