Retired Astronaut Marsha Ivins Reflects on Her Time in Space
Marsha Ivins (AeroEngr’73) is a retired astronaut who has participated in five missions to space. Over the course of her career, Ivins spent a total of 55 days in space handling various responsibilities, from monitoring systems as a flight engineer to managing photography. This year, she was selected as a 2024 inductee for the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, one of the highest honors in the industry.
As a child, did you imagine life as an astronaut?
I have wanted to work in the space business in some capacity since I was 10 years old. Imagining opens the door to trying, and trying is step one in achieving. I wasn’t solely focused on just flying in space, although of course that was a dream. Everyone I knew, family, teachers and friends said it could never happen.
Of your career missions, are there any that you feel especially passionate about or regard as your favorite?
There is no such thing as a bad spaceflight. They all had shining moments for me.
Can you describe the feeling of looking out at the Earth for the first time from space?
I cannot adequately express the visceral feeling of realizing you are no longer on the planet. What you see is only a sliver of the feeling.
What were some of your career goals when you were studying aerospace engineering at CU Boulder?
NASA was not hiring astronauts when I graduated from college. I applied as an engineer to the Johnson Space Center (JSC), but 1974 was a severe downtime for aerospace engineers in all industries. I also applied for 27 other jobs around the country that were not hiring at the time. I was offered and accepted a job with Abbott Laboratories, and shortly after I got a call from the JSC saying I’d been offered an engineering position in a new class — which I then accepted.
How does it feel to be selected for the Astronaut Hall of Fame?
I am honored to have been considered and selected for induction. There have been 106 men and women inducted into the AHOF since 1990, covering the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs. It is overseen by the Astronaut Scholarship Fund which, to date, has given over $8 million in scholarships to more than 790 students in STEM fields at partner universities across the country.
Photo courtesy Marsha Ivins