Lisa Nowak, a former astronaut who drove 1,000 miles from Houston to Orlando to mount a bizarre attack on a romantic rival pleaded guilty Tuesday to reduced charges and was sentenced to a year on probation.

Nowak, 46, was charged with attempted kidnapping after a Feb. 5, 2007, altercation with Colleen Shipman, who was dating Nowak’s ex-boyfriend Cmdr. William A. Oefelein.

Judge: “I am sentencing you to I year supervised probabtion – this can be transferred to Texas … 50 hours community service … You are to have no contact of any sort – and I mean any sort – with Colleen Shipman … You are to send a sincere letter of apology to Ms. Shipman to be delivered within 10 days … You brought this upon yourself. I do not have any sympathy with you in that respect … I also want you to do an 8 hour anger management class. You are to have no contact whatsoever with Mr. Oefelin either. No books, no messages, no poems …”

She must also send Shipman a letter of apology within 10 days, “a sincere letter of apology, not one of these vanilla things that I see from other defendants,” Lubet told Nowak. “It’s been almost three years since the events took place that caused this nightmare for Ms. Shipman, and you are 100 percent responsible.”

“She was going to kill me,” Shipman said in court. “I could see it in her eyes.”

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Lisa Nowak Pleads Guilty