Amy Ross - Office of Professional Practice - Purdue University

Ross currently serves as a space suit engineer and space suit pressure garment technical discipline lead at NASA Johnson Space Center. She got her foot in the door at NASA as a co-op student. She worked with veteran spacesuit designer Joseph Kosmo on a new glove design, which is still in use today. Once she began working with NASA full time, she and other engineers experimented with building a better surface extravehicular activities suit, like those worn on the moon during the Apollo missions. As head of the advanced spacesuit pressure garment development, she designed the gloves used by every spacewalking astronaut since 1998. In 2008, her primary focus became the development of a new pressure garment for the Constellation Program, which will carry humans back to the moon and beyond. Her team recently introduced Z2, a new generation of spacesuit that accommodates the microgravity of space, as well as the environments of other planets. The new design is set to be used for future human visits to the moon, Mars and beyond.  

Purdue experience

Completed a five-session co-op with NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston.