Janice Voss

BSES '75

NASA astronaut Voss was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Voss was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1990 and flew as a mission specialist on missions STS-57 (1993), STS-63 (1995), STS-83 (1995), STS-94 (1997) and STS-99 (2000). During her career as an astronaut, she participated in the first Space Shuttle rendezvous with the Mir space station on STS-63. During the STS-99 mission, she and her crew members produced what was at the time the most accurate digital topographical map of the Earth.

From October 2004-November 2007, she was science director for NASA’s Kepler Space Observatory, an Earth-orbiting satellite designed to find Earth-like extrasolar planets in nearby solar systems.

Before becoming an astronaut, Voss worked at the Orbital Sciences Corporation, supporting mission integration and flight operations for the Transfer Orbit Stage that launched, among other things, the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite from a space shuttle in 1993.

Voss died in 2012. In July 2014, Orbital Sciences launched the SS Janice Voss, which traveled to the International Space Station to resupply the food, equipment and experiments aboard the station, named in recognition of her and her work with Orbital Sciences and NASA.

Purdue experience

Completed a co-op at NASA Johnson Space Center, working on computer simulations in the engineering and development directorate in the years leading up to the start of the shuttle era