• The STS-129 flight commander Charlie Hobaugh is the brother of current TTU student Charlotte Hobaugh Gentry.
• Roger Crouch was TTU’s first alumnus in space. Crouch, a 1962 TTU physics graduate and Jamestown native, served as a payload specialist on two flights of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997.
• Teresa Vanhooser, a TTU industrial engineering graduate, is Deputy Manager of the Ares Projects Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
• Rick Burt, a 1978 mechanical engineering graduate, serves as manager of the Ares I First Stage in the Exploration Launch Projects Office at Marshall.
• Fred Schramm, a 1975 industrial engineering alumnus, serves NASA’s Engineering Technology Utilization and Commercialization Office.
• David Russell “Rusty” Hunt, an electrical engineering graduate, was one of two flight directors on the LCROSS project that impacted with the moon recently and discovered water.
• As president and co-owner of Cookeville-based Flexial Corp., Rick Larsen has made space applications a principal focus, including applications for International Space Station.
• TTU mechanical engineering professor Stephen Canfield’s gimbal mount, known as the “Canfield joint,” may be used in the design of the Crew Exploration Vehicle, or CEV, a transporter that would replace existing space shuttles when the current fleet is retired about 2010.
• In his college days, TTU President Bob Bell was a summer intern in base support operations, He served as a data courier and helped get computer tapes and other launch-related information from one launch site to another.
• In 2008, Ling Tang, doctoral student in Tennessee Tech University's civil and environmental department, was one of 50 nationwide to receive the prestigious NASA Earth System Science Fellowship.
• Faisal Hossain was selected one of just 18 recipients nationwide to receive a NASA New Investigator Program grant in Earth Sciences.
• James Carlock, a 1967 electrical engineering graduate, served as Lockheed’s program manager for the Hubble Space Telescope project.
• TTU chemistry professor Robert Glinski wrote an award-winning paper analyzing data gathered by the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph, which is mounted on the Hubble Space Telescope.
• TTU’s manufacturing and industrial technology department competes and excels in NASA’s annual Great Moonbuggy Race at Marshall.
