Catherine "Cady" Coleman, who returned this spring from a months-long mission aboard the International Space Station, is the most recent space traveler from Western Mass.
Byron K. Lichtenberg is one of several Space Shuttle astronauts with links to Western Massachusetts.
Catherine G. “Cady” Coleman, of Shelburne, who received a doctoral degree from the University of Massachusetts in 1991, is the most recent space traveler, having returned this spring from a months-long mission aboard the International Space Station.
She spent more than 500 hours in space as a NASA astronaut on two shuttle missions aboard the shuttle Columbia in 1995 and 1999.
During the 1999 mission, she helped launch the Chandra X-ray telescope into a distant orbit around the Earth.
Story Musgrave, who grew up in Stockbridge, is a veteran of six shuttle flights, including the 1990 flight of the shuttle Discovery that helped save the Hubble telescope.
Musgrave also held the record as the oldest person – 61 – to go into space in November 1996 when he flew aboard Columbia. (That record was broken in 1998 when astronaut John Glenn returned to space at the age of 77.)
Janice Voss, a graduate of Minnechaug Regional High School, is a veteran of five shuttle flights between 1993 and 2000, including one that rendezvoused with the Russian space station Mir.
Voss was aboard the space shuttle Columbia when it developed problems in 1997. That mission was cut short when problems developed with one of the shuttle’s three fuel cell power generation units.
In 2001, two astronauts with links to the region flew on the same mission. Daniel T. Barry, who grew up in South Hadley, and Susan J. Helms, who lived in Holyoke for several years while her father was stationed at Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee, spent 12 days aboard the shuttle Discovery as it ferried supplies to the International Space Station.