Janice Voss

2015 Co-op Hall of Fame Inductee

Education

B.S., ’75, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Purdue University
M.S., ’77, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
Ph.D., ’87, Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT

Professional Career

Dr. Janice Voss was an American Engineer and a NASA astronaut. Before becoming an astronaut, Janice 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.

Janice 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 shuttle rendezvous with the Mir space station on STS-63. During the STS-99 mission, she and her fellow crew members produced what was at the time the most accurate digital topographical map of the Earth. From October 2004 to 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.

Janice passed away in 2012 at age 55 from breast cancer. 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. Janice is survived by her parents, James and Louise Hinds Voss, and three sisters: Linda, Karen, and Victoria. 

Co-op Advocate

Janice was a co-op at NASA Johnson Space Center while earning her bachelor’s degree at Purdue. She worked on computer simulations in the engineering and development directorate in the years leading up to the start of the shuttle era.