.Weber Follows Extraordinary Trajectory to Space
Purdue alumna Mary Ellen Weber’s career as an astronaut, chemist, business executive and speaker has followed an extraordinary trajectory that has taken her from West Lafayette to the stars.
As a chemical engineering major at Purdue, Weber was absorbed in a rigorous academic curriculum that could have easily consumed her throughout her college years. But as a member of Phi Mu Sorority, she found an opportunity to expand her horizons.
“In a sorority, there’s camaraderie,” Weber says. “Being exposed to people with different majors and backgrounds in a close setting like that expanded my horizons. It opened me to different things that expanded me as a person and that’s what I found so meaningful.”
Weber emphasizes that meeting other women had a significant effect on her ambition to seek new opportunities and confidence to try new things. This was particularly important in an era when women were often relegated to lesser roles within many professions and, in some cases, totally excluded from them. At the time of Weber’s arrival at Purdue, it would be three years before Sally Ride would become the first American woman in space.
“It was important to meet other women with different perspectives and experiences who showed me how important it was to keep my eyes open and look for new things,” Weber says.
“Those doors, even if they were closed then, weren’t necessarily going to be closed forever – and there were doors that were open that I didn’t even know about.”
One door that opened for Weber was into the world of aviation. First, while perusing the Purdue Exponent, she saw an advertisement for the Purdue Skydiving Club. Of her five friends who agreed to join her, she was the only to show up and it changed her life in many ways to this day. She completed her first skydive as a Boilermaker in the early days of the sport with round parachutes, belly-mounted reserves and combat boots. In the 40 years since she has been an avid competitive skydiver, logging more than 6,000 skydives and winning more than two dozen medals at the US National Skydiving Championships. She has participated in multiple world-record skydives, including in 2002 as part of the world record largest freefall formation with 300 skydivers.
Also at Purdue, Weber discovered that one of her Phi Mu sisters was training to be a pilot. This sparked an ambition that ultimately led to her becoming an instrument-rated pilot.
These experiences and the relationships Weber developed as a member of Phi Mu helped her develop the audacity to apply to NASA to become an astronaut. Weber’s inquiry began in a way that may seem outlandish considering today’s technology – she called 411 (information), asked for the phone number of NASA and asked for information on how to apply.
“I thought they would laugh at me,” Weber recalls. “The friends I told I was doing this thought it was absolutely absurd, but I did it anyway. I worked hard on that application for NASA for years before I submitted it.”
Weber’s persistence and inquiry would pay off. After graduating from Purdue with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering (with honors) in 1984, she earned her doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of California-Berkely in 1988. She was selected by NASA in the 14th group of astronauts in 1992.
During her 10-year career with NASA, Weber flew two spaceflights (STS-70 Discovery and STS-101 Atlantis), and logged more than 450 hours in space, 297 Earth orbits, and 7.8 million miles traveled. On the Discovery mission, she deployed a communications satellite to its orbit and was the primary spacewalker if needed, part of the flight deck crew, the crew medical officer and operated myriad science experiments.
Her mission on Atlantis was the third devoted to the construction of the International Space Station (ISS), a groundbreaking mission. With the batteries on the fledgling ISS losing the ability to recharge and extensive delays of a new Russian addition to ISS, the situation and future of the ISS became dire, resulting in unprecedented crew and mission reshuffling. In addition, this was the first flight of a new glass cockpit for the Space Shuttle, heralding in a new era for the Shuttle. During this mission, she operated the Shuttle’s 60-foot robotic arm to maneuver spacewalking crewmembers along the station’s surface, was again part of the flight deck crew and directed the transfer of equipment.
Weber’s time at NASA included a myriad of other positions, such as serving at NASA Headquarters in DC in a legislative role alongside Dan Goldin, then chief executive of NASA. This came at a turbulent time, with political pressure forcing a redesign of the entire station to include Russian hardware and cosmonauts and with Congress introducing bills to kill the entire space station program. Her work was critical in persuading legislators to continue funding the construction of the station. Today, the station is a huge multinational laboratory, occupied non-stop for the past 24 years.
Weber’s road to becoming an astronaut was not easy.
“I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunities I’ve had, not just to become an astronaut and fly in space, but to work on things that are bigger than my own career and really matter,” she says.
This spring, Weber returned to campus to share her experiences and meet with members of Delta Gamma Sorority, part of the sorority’s lectureships in values and ethics. In addition -to being extremely impressed with the women she met in the sorority, she says that she hopes the knowledge she shared will inspire this generation of sorority women to seek new opportunities – just as her own experience inspired her.
“It was rewarding for me not just to see the talented capability of these young people, but to have a chance to share my experience and enthusiasm with them,” Weber says. “If you have an opportunity to put a thought in one person’s mind that has them reaching out for something they wouldn’t have otherwise done, it’s a success for you and for them.
“They were just such impressive young people and I am so happy for them,” Weber continues. “I’m jealous of them. They have their whole lives open to them and so many doors that are going to be opening for them. I think our nation and our world are in good hands if all young people are as talented as the young people that I met that day.”
After leaving NASA in 2002, Weber served as the vice president for government affairs and policy at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. She is the founder of Stellar Strategies, LLC, consulting in strategic communications, technology innovation and high-risk operations. Today, she works with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a research and development agency of the Department of Defense. She also remains close with five of her Phi Mu sisters from Purdue and gathers with them nearly every year.
As she reflects on her remarkable career, she credits her experience in Phi Mu for creating a foundation for discovery.
“I got to know people of different backgrounds and who had different ways of thinking,” Weber says. “None of the five friends I remain close with today were chemical engineers. They weren’t like me and here we are, still close after decades have gone by. To me, that was the value. If I had not been involved in the sorority system, I don’t think I would have ever expanded my boundaries or thought about the many things that I could do.”