Forty Years: Astronaut Dr. Anna Lee Fisher is reunited with the 911 Turbo

Atlanta. Dr. Anna Lee Fisher started out as a medical professional – the training for which she regards as the toughest challenge she ever faced. As a reward, in 1977, she purchased a Porsche 911 Turbo – her pride and joy.

Soon after, she would leave the medical profession to join the astronaut corps, and she said goodbye to her treasured Garnet Red sports car and focused on her dream of flying into space. Forty years to the day since Dr. Anna Lee Fisher realized that dream, a short film captures the moment she was reunited with a 911 Turbo – igniting the spark once again for a car she’d said goodbye to four decades previously.

“I’ve always loved Porsche from the time I was little,” Dr. Fisher recently reminisced from behind the wheel, “My mom and my grandmother are from Germany, and one of my uncles had a Porsche and used to take me on rides all the time.”

The inspirational life and career of Dr. Anna Lee Fisher

These rides in her uncle’s Porsche cemented her love of adventure. After listening at age 12 to a radio broadcast of Alan Shepard becoming the first American in space, Dr. Fisher dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Dr. Fisher’s origins in medicine are credited by her in helping prepare her for the rigors that would await as she was accepted into NASA’s astronaut training program in 1979, part of the first group of women to enter the U.S. program – emerging as a Mission Specialist.

Mission STS-51A lifted off on November 8, 1984, from launchpad 39A – the same launch site that saw humankind depart for the Moon. Their mission would last just over seven days and cover three million miles – retrieving two satellites along the way. Dr. Fisher would become just the fourth American women and the first mother to reach space, spending 192 hours living off earth.  

Dr. Fisher would go on to work on the creation of the International Space Station and the Orion program. She retired from NASA in 2017, but her love for space exploration and speed remains undimmed, as she freely admits. “I have collected quite a lot of speeding tickets … you would think they’d understand.”