Nowak uses ‘temporary insanity’ as defense

Capt. Lisa M. Nowak, the former NASA astronaut indicted on charges of confronting, assaulting and attempting to kidnap her love rival at the Orlando, Florida, airport in February, will plead insanity at her trial, according to a notice filed yesterday in State Circuit Court in Orlando.

The court document unsealed by the trial judge claims that Nowak suffered from major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, insomnia and "brief psychotic disorder with marked stressors," at the time of the incident.

The defense plea also claimed that Nowak had lost 15 per cent of her body weight and was struggling with "marital separation".

"Even the most naive observer should recognize that Lisa Nowak's behavior on February 5 was uncharacteristic and unpredicted for such an accomplished person with no criminal record or history of violence," Mr. Donald Lykkebak, defense lawyer of Nowak added in a public statement.

The astronaut reportedly wore nappies and drove nearly 1,000 miles from Houston to Orlando, where she was later arrested with charges of attempted kidnapping of U.S. Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman, the girlfriend of former space shuttle pilot, William Oefelein, whom Nowak was seeing earlier.

Starting her career with NASA Astronaut Corps at Johnson Space Center in August 1996, Nowak was the first Italian American woman to go into space.

Nowak, 44, a navy captain and a NASA qualified mission specialist in robotics flew aboard the Space Shuttle during mission STS-121 in July 2006. As a crew member of the STS-121 mission, she served as flight engineer and operated the shuttle's robotic arm during several spacewalks and logged almost 13 days in space.

Following arrest in February this year, Nowak's assignment to the space agency as an astronaut was terminated by NASA with effect from March 8, 2007.

Nowak married Richard T. Nowak in 1988. Nowaks have three children, a son born and twin daughters. The couple separated in January 2007.

Involved in an affair with Oefelein that lasted two years; Oefelein gradually began to break off near the end of 2006 and started seeing Shipman, who works as an engineer at Patrick Air Force Base.