Washington - Disgraced former astronaut Lisa Nowak was sentenced Tuesday to serve one year of probation for a 2007 attack on her former lover's girlfriend.

The 46-year-old navy captain entered pleas of guilty to charges of felony burglary of a vehicle and misdemeanour battery.

She had faced more serious allegations, including kidnapping- related charges, in the pepper-spray attack on the woman in a parking lot in Orlando, Florida.

Nowak, who flew on a 2006 space shuttle mission to the orbiting International Space Station, had been seeing fellow US astronaut Bill Oefelein. She became jealous and enraged when he started dating another woman, herself an air force officer.

The case was a public-relations disaster for the US space agency. (dpa)