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Tech's first female astronaut, Jan Davis is a veteran of three flights into spaceincluding the first husbandwife flight. 56
Astronaut N. Jan Davis, Biol 75, the first female Tech alumnus to become an astronaut, is a veteran of three space shuttle flights. She and her husband, astronaut Mark Lee, made headlines on her first shuttle flight in 1992 aboard the shuttle Endeavour—and received an out-of-this-world wedding gift from NASA. They were allowed to become the first couple to fly together in space. Although NASA policy forbids husbands and wives from flying on the same shuttle flight, an exception was made because Davis and Lee had been assigned to the flight 18 months before they were married. Her first flight aboard the shuttle Endeavour, Sept. 12-20,1992, was
GEORGIA TECH • Fall 1998
NASA's 50th shuttle mission: Spacelab-J, a cooperative venture between the United States and Japan. Davis was responsible for operating Spacelab and its subsystems and performing a variety of experiments. Davis' second flight was aboard the shuttle Discovery, Feb. 3-11,1994. It was also the second flight of Spacehab (Space Habitation Module) and the first shuttle flight on which a Russian cosmonaut was a crew member. Davis was the payload commander for her third mission, aboard Discovery, Aug. 7-19,1997. Davis is on assignment from the Astronaut Office to NASA Headquarters where she is the director of Human Exploration and Development of Space.
Michael Richard "Rich" Clifford, MS AE '83, made three space shuttle flights and a spacewalk before leaving NASA in 1997 to become Space Station Flight Operations Manager for Boeing Defense and Space Group. Clifford, who earned his undergraduate degree from the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, became an astronaut in 1990. He first flew on the shuttle Discovery, Dec. 2-9, 1992, on a Defense Department mission. He flew aboard Endeavour, April 9-20,1994, on a Space Radar Laboratory mission. Clifford's last mission was aboard Atlantis, March 22-31, 1996, the third docking mission to the Russian space station Mir. Clifford performed a six-hour spacewalk, the first while docked to an orbiting space station.