In the microgravity of space, one's normal Earth haircut can fan
out like the tendrils of some heretofore undiscovered species of
cosmic jellyfish. Astronauts' coiffures became an unlikely
concern in the early 1990s, when the tresses of astronaut Marsha
Ivins ensnared the public imagination. As Dr. Amy Foster of the
University of Central Florida explains: When Group VIII women
were still ASCANs, the astronaut office chose not to issue a
policy that would dictate hairstyles for any of the astronauts.
But when Marsha Ivins, known for her long hair, flew aboard
STS-32 in 1990, people outside of NASA took notice of the
problem. One of Ivin's crewmates snapped a photograph of a huge
halo of hair floating around her head. An industrial safety
engineer who saw the picture in the newspaper wrote to NASA,
expressing his concern that Ivins's untethered hair created a
danger of getting tangled in equipment. Despite the astronaut
office's previous hesitance about dictating a policy on hair,
Donald Puddy, the Flight Crew