Space
— SPACE EXPLORATION —
Moon Landing
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong (AAE’55, HDR E’70) became the first person to step onto the moon’s surface, speaking the famous words, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” He served as commander of this historic Apollo 11 mission, during which he also became the first person to land a spacecraft on the moon. Three years earlier, Armstrong performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space as command pilot for the Gemini 8 mission. Gene Cernan was the most recent man to visit the moon, spending a record amount of time on the lunar surface as commander of Apollo 17 in 1972.
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Spacewalks
Jerry Ross (ME’70, MS ME’72, HDR’00) was the first person in history to go into space seven times, a record matched by only one person. He is a member of the Silver Team, NASA’s first pair of spacewalking grandfathers. Drew Feustel (S’89, MS S’91, HDR S’18) ranks third in history in hours spent spacewalking.
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Spacesuit Design
Amy Ross (ME’94, MS ME’96) followed in the footsteps of her father, Jerry Ross (ME’70, MS ME’72, HDR’00), and entered the family business: space. As head of advanced spacesuit pressure garment development at NASA, she helped design new gloves for her father to use, called Phase VI gloves. They were so successful that every spacesuit since 1998 has used this design.
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Space Debris
Nobu Okada (MBA’01) merged his entrepreneurial skills with his love of space exploration, founding Astroscale. The Singapore-based satellite services company is the first to tackle safe removal of debris in orbit. This helps not only space agencies like NASA but also the safety of people on Earth, as collisions with debris could impair the functionality of working satellites used for communication, weather, and other critical functions.
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Commercial Space Flight
The VSS Unity, Virgin Galactic’s passenger spaceplane, took its first passenger into the air in 2019, when Beth Moses (AAE’92, MS AAE’94) went along for the ride. Moses, the first woman to fly to space on a commercial vehicle, is now qualified for commercial astronaut wings from the Federal Aviation Administration. She is the chief astronaut instructor at Virgin Galactic and trains potential passengers for space travel.
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Mercury Seven
Virgil Ivan “Gus” Grissom (ME’50) was one of the seven original NASA Project Mercury astronauts. He was the second American to fly in space and the first member of the NASA Astronaut Corps to fly in space twice. In 1967, he was killed in a prelaunch test fire along with Roger Chafee and Ed White. Grissom was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
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Space Flights
Engineer and NASA astronaut Janice Voss (AAE’75) flew in space five times, jointly holding the record for American women in space fight. She cited Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time as an inspiration for becoming an astronaut. Nearly 30 percent of all US spaceflights have included a Purdue grad, and 10 missions have had more than one.
— SPACE EXPLORATION —
Interstellar Habitats
A multidisciplinary team composed of scientists from the Colleges of Science and Engineering is researching potential habitats in space. One study found a potential human habitat on the moon — lunar lava tubes. Another compares the minerals and rocks found on Mars to Mars-like volcanic features found on Earth to determine what the red planet may have looked like four billion years ago.
