Article: Rapid Descent; Lisa Nowak had been to space, but now she's wound up in police custody after allegedly attacking a romantic rival. How an astronaut snapped.

Byline: Arian Campo-Flores (With Gretel C. Kovach, Jonathan Mummolo, Alexandra Gekas and Lynn Waddell)

Lisa Nowak was a super-mom. She helped raise three kids--a teenage son and twin 5-year-old daughters. She cooked and baked, preparing sumptuous Easter brunches and extravagantly decorated Christmas pastries. She played the piano, collected rubber stamps and cultivated African violets in the foyer of her home in suburban Houston. Beyond this, Nowak was also a NASA astronaut, known as one of the two "Robo-chicks" who operated the robotic arm on the space-shuttle Discovery last July. To many who knew her, Nowak, 43, appeared to pull it all off with aplomb. But ...

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