James Voss

Astronaut professor launching into retirement

Jeff Zehnder — Fri, 02 May 2025 18:00:39 +0000

Astronaut professor launching into retirement Jeff Zehnder Fri, 05/02/2025 - 12:00

Jeff Zehnder

Voss at Sierra Nevada with students and a Dream Chaser mockup.

From training as an Army Ranger and flight test engineer, to life as an astronaut in the microgravity of space, to educating the next generation of aerospace engineers, Jim Voss (MAero’74; HonPhD’00) has a list of career achievements a mile long.

Now he is taking on a new challenge: retirement.

A scholar-in-residence in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, Voss has served as a faculty member at CU Boulder since 2009.

He has also taught at Auburn University and West Point and worked in the commercial space sector as Vice President for Space Exploration Systems at Sierra Nevada Corporation and its predecessor, SpaceDev.

What led you to pursue engineering as a career?

My older brother was in engineering at Auburn at the time and I didn’t know what I wanted to major in. He said to pick engineering because it’s very broad, and I could move from that discipline to almost anything else easily.

I found the math parts very difficult. I really questioned whether engineering was the right thing and thought about switching over to physical education. I was wrestling for Auburn and thought I would like coaching that. But I stuck with it and finished with my Aerospace Engineering degree.

When did you decide to apply to the astronaut program?

I’ve always liked space and I like reading science fiction. Growing up we didn’t have a human spaceflight program yet, so even the idea of going to space was science fiction, but it always sounded really interesting.

In 1978, when I was stationed in Germany, there was a little tiny article in the Army Times that NASA was creating a new vehicle and would need engineers and scientists to be astronauts and you didn’t have to have perfect vision. When I read that I thought they’d created the program just for me.

I applied, but didn’t get selected because I wasn’t qualified at that point.

I applied (to the astronaut program) five times over nine years. Each time I was improving and had done things that made my application stronger."

How long did it take before you were accepted?

I applied five times over nine years.

Each time I was improving and had done things that made my application stronger.

Getting declined feels pretty bad. You know it’s a tough application and only a few people get selected, but it’s hard to accept you’re not good enough. To go through it multiple times you wonder if you’re ever going to be good enough.

What were you doing to improve your application prospects?

I did things in my career that were interesting to me that I also knew were relevant to NASA.

I was always interested in flying, so I got my private pilot’s license.

Then I saw a note about the Naval Test Pilot School, which is where the Army sends its pilots. I was being recruited for the Army Aviation Research and Development Command, but I asked my assignments guy if I could be sent to the test pilot program first. I thought it would help at the R&D command if I was trained to be a flight test engineer.

He said, “You’re not going to test pilot school. You’re an infantry guy,” but I got bold and wrote a letter to the responsible general officer about it and he got me assigned to test pilot school.

I’m convinced that program had a big role in me eventually being chosen as an astronaut.

The one thing I didn’t do was get a PhD. It would have been just for my application, and that didn’t appeal to me.

You were selected in 1987 and had your first spaceflight in 1991. What is it like working in microgravity?

Floating around in microgravity is a pretty neat thing. I like being able to move really heavy things around and do weird moves and flips in space. From a sensory perspective, it’s almost overwhelming because it’s very different. You can be upside down or in any orientation.

You have a different perspective on volume when you’re floating around. You can use all the volume. You’re not limited to the floor. You can have someone lying up on the ceiling and they feel out of the way. Your perception changes.

You share the record for the longest spacewalk in American history at eight hours and 56 minutes. Was that planned?

We had no idea when we were out. It wasn’t until we got back inside that they said, ‘You know that’s the longest spacewalk ever.’

Wow, I knew I was tired and getting thirsty.

Had I known we were at 8:56, I would have stayed out for four more minutes to hit nine hours.

Jim Voss with his Cirrus SR22.

You flew on five shuttle missions. What led you to retire from the astronaut program?

There were three of us on my final flight and we were giving an interview from ISS. The interviewer asked if we would sign up for another mission. Yuri Usachev and I both said this was probably our last flight. Susan Helm said she wasn’t sure. It ended up being the last for all of us.

We trained for four years for the mission and a lot of that was spent in Russia. I thought I’d done everything I wanted to do, and I didn’t want to go through another couple years of training. It was time to do something different and I wanted to teach again.

You’ve had multiple assignments in Russia for NASA. How is your Russian?

I’m not a language person. Before going the first time, I got a couple months of very part-time instruction, but when I got to Russia my Russian was really not good.

We didn’t have any interpreters. None of the training materials were in English and almost nobody spoke English.

I really had trouble since I spoke it poorly; I wanted to speak it correctly. Roscosmos provided a Russian instructor and I spent every morning doing training and I eventually got there. After a year I could communicate well.

How does teaching at West Point compare to CU Boulder and Auburn?

I enjoy all the undergraduate and graduate students I’ve taught. I enjoy the interaction with them and seeing their enthusiasm. The difference at West Point is the students are very disciplined. If you were boring as an instructor—as sometimes happens— and they were sleepy, they would stand up behind their desk to pay attention.

How does space mission training compare to actually being in orbit?

The actual mission is a lot easier than the training. NASA needs you to be ready for anything, so during the training they’re intentionally causing malfunctions. Once you actually get up there, everything’s not breaking around you.

What do you have planned for retirement?

I still enjoy flying and working on my airplanes. I have a Cirrus SR22 and a Rutan Long-EZ experimental aircraft I built myself. I spend a good bit of time doing maintenance on them. They keep me pretty busy.

My wife and I would like to travel more, although I think she’s worried I’m going to miss teaching.

We have a lot of travel plans. We went to Egypt when we were younger and are interested in visiting again. I’d like to go to New Zealand and go back to southern Africa. Our next big trip will be to Brazil this fall for the annual Association of Space Explorers Congress. I expect to stay busy in retirement, but will miss my CU students and colleagues.

Additional Photos

Voss floating in microgravity.

ISS Expedition 2 photo with Voss, Yury Usachev, and Susan Helms.

Voss on a spacewalk while orbiting Earth.

Leading classroom instruction at CU Boulder

Voss helping a student gear up in a mock space suit.

Voss being recognized with the AIAA Haley Space Flight Award.

From training as an Army Ranger and flight test engineer, to life as an astronaut in the microgravity of space, to educating the next generation of...

Off

Traditional

Voss conducting a spacewalk on STS-101.

White

Conference on World Affairs: Talking isolation and loneliness with astronaut Jim Voss

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Sep 2020 18:04:52 +0000

Conference on World Affairs: Talking isolation and loneliness with astronaut Jim Voss Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/14/2020 - 12:04

The �鶹��Ƶ Conference on World Affairs included a special virtual panel: "Zooming" in on Loneliness, featuring five-time NASA astronaut and Smead Aerospace Scholar in Residence Jim Voss. The event was streamed live on Sept. 11.

[video:https://youtu.be/d_oKOXnmxAU?t=521]

The webinar starts at 8:40.

The �鶹��Ƶ Conference on World Affairs included a special virtual panel: "Zooming" in on Loneliness, featuring five-time NASA astronaut and Smead Aerospace Scholar in Residence Jim Voss. The event was streamed live on Sept. 11...

Off

Traditional

White

CU Boulder team advances in NASA tech competition

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 19:46:57 +0000

CU Boulder team advances in NASA tech competition Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 02/26/2020 - 12:46

Jeff Zehnder

The Microsoft Hololens system.

�鶹��Ƶ students are designing next-generation spacesuit technology.

The CU Technology for Extreme Environments (CUTEE) Club is competing in the NASA SUITS Challenge to design and create an augmented reality system – an interactive, heads-up display – that could present live electronic information to astronauts inside their spacesuit helmets.

Heads Up Technology

It is technology that could be used to show astronauts their spacesuit status, outline procedures for assignments, provide wayfinding, and generally help them more work more efficiently.

“We want to help astronauts be more self-reliant, so they don't need to radio back and forth with ground control as much,” said Chris Hill, a senior in computer science and the team president. “If we want to go to Mars or colonize other planets, radio signals to Earth take longer and longer to transmit, so astronauts have to be able to work on their own.”

NASA is particularly interested in student solutions because they often bring unique perspectives to challenging problems and approach issues differently than career scientists and engineers.

The competition has two phases. The first, completed during fall semester, was a written proposal. In December, NASA announced CU Boulder as one of 21 finalist teams selected to develop prototype systems.

CUTEE is using the Microsoft HoloLens headset platform to design their AR system. In April, they'll travel to Johnson Space Center and present their projects to NASA judges, including actual astronauts.

Thankfully for CUTEE, one of their faculty advisors has plenty of space experience of his own – Jim Voss, a scholar-in-residence in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, is a five-time NASA astronaut with 202 days of space experience under his belt.

“The team has great ideas that will help astronauts accomplish tasks. The most enjoyable part for me is seeing the creative, innovative thinking of our young engineering students,” Voss said.

K-12 Outreach

PhD student Jordan Dixon talking with K-12 students in Telluride.

Part of any NASA college competition is to scout talent – both in new ideas and potential future hires. For SUITS, the agency is extending that to K-12 students. As part of the project, college teams are required to conduct outreach to school districts.

Hill and members of the CUTEE team have held sessions in elementary, middle and high school classrooms across Colorado both in person and via Skype and are co-hosting a Family Engineering Day at CU Boulder on Feb. 23. All of these events aim to show students new technology, like the HoloLens system, and build enthusiasm for STEM careers.

“We want to show kids we’re just normal people and to have them come away not just thinking about NASA, but technology generally,” Hill said. “Tech is changing youth culture. Augmented reality, implantable tech, things like that are the future of how people will see the world.”

Allie Anderson, an assistant professor in Smead Aerospace and team advisor, says they’re particularly focused on outreach beyond the Denver metro.

“We’re engaging in Hayden, Telluride, Ouray – rural communities that don’t have the easy access to museums, planetariums, and science that the Front Range does,” Anderson said. “We want to increase awareness for STEM in places students might not immediately consider it as a career.”

NASA Suits Logo.

�鶹��Ƶ students are designing next-generation spacesuit technology. The CU Technology for Extreme Environments (CUTEE) Club is competing in the NASA SUITS Challenge to design and create an augmented reality system – an interactive, heads-up display – that could present live electronic information to astronauts inside their...

Off

Traditional

White

Students designing augmented reality system for astronauts

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Dec 2018 04:05:21 +0000

Students designing augmented reality system for astronauts Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/20/2018 - 21:05

Jeff Zehnder

NASA is turning to university students for help with the next big space technology – augmented reality.

The �鶹��Ƶ has been selected by NASA as one of 16 colleges to participate in the Spacesuit User Interface Technologies for Students (SUITS) 2019 challenge.

The mission? To develop an interactive heads up display system for use inside space helmets that could be used by astronauts during space walks.

“The idea is to make EVAs easier. To guide them through procedures they need to follow or have someone at mission control be able to draw on the display itself to point out a component,” said Christine Chang, the CU Boulder team project manager and a computer science PhD student.

The team has until April to develop and program a prototype system using the Microsoft HoloLens headset platform. Then they will travel to Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas where a group of testers, likely including actual astronauts, will try out their prototypes.

To ensure the team’s product meets the approval of such a demanding audience, they have an advisor with first-hand experience: CU Boulder aerospace faculty member and five-time astronaut Col. Jim Voss.

The Microsoft HoloLens system.

“He’s our voice of experience. He’s done EVAs and can say, ‘Don’t worry about having the interface do X, but instead here’s something that would be really useful’,” Chang said.

The team is also advised by Allie Anderson, assistant professor of aerospace engineering sciences. Anderson’s research focuses on space suit design and wearable space sensor systems.

In addition to Chang, the team includes two aerospace PhD students, three computer science undergraduate, and two students from ATLAS.

NASA is specifically calling the experience a “challenge,” instead of a competition. They’re not looking to crown a formal winner, they’re seeking the best ideas and designs.

K-12 STEM Outreach

The team is promoting science and engineering to Colorado K-12 students. Their efforts emphasize the NASA SUITS challenge, applications of augmented and virtual reality technologies, the engineering design process, and other STEM topics. Learn more about their outreach.

“NASA is particularly interested in student solutions. Students bring a fresh perspective. Someone who is 22 years old doesn’t see the same restrictions as a career scientist or engineer,” Chang said.

This is the second year for the SUITS challenge, and the team is building on ideas and tests they began in 2017. In fact, their earlier work recently earned some unique recognition.

After submitting an abstract on their user testing, they have been invited to participate in the 2019 International Conference on Environmental Systems in Boston, Massachusetts in May.

If you are a student interested in joining the team, they are accepting new members. Email NASAsuits@lists.colorado.edu.

Off

Traditional

White

Aerospace faculty member Jim Voss has been to space five times. Commuting from Houston to Boulder is no big deal

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 21:12:51 +0000

Aerospace faculty member Jim Voss has been to space five times. Commuting from Houston to Boulder is no big deal Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/04/2018 - 15:12

Jim Voss is no stranger to work travel.

In one two-year stretch, he flew monthly between Houston and a job site in Star City, Russia, near Moscow.

That wasn’t even extreme: As a NASA astronaut, Voss (MAero’74; HonPhD’00) circled Earth more than 550 times during five Space Shuttle missions.

He spent 201 days in space, 163 as a resident of the International Space Station. In 2001, he and a crewmate floated outside it for 8 hours, 56 minutes, setting the record for longest spacewalk.

Now 69 and three times retired and unretired, Voss continues traveling long-distance for work. Since 2009, he’s been teaching in CU Boulder’s aerospace engineering program, commuting twice a month from Houston, where his wife, Suzan, still works for NASA.

Usually Voss flies Southwest Airlines to Denver. But every few months he pilots himself in one of two small aircraft he owns, a single-engine, four-seat Cirrus SR22 with tan leather interior. He’s also got a two-seat Rutan Long-EZ experimental aircraft he built himself.

Off

Traditional

White