Ninety-five astronauts are in the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame and Missouri native Janet Kavandi could have her name added to the prestigious list. She tells Missourinet she would join a large group of famous astronauts if she’s inducted.

“People like the initial first seven astronauts, John Glenn is in there, Neil Armstrong, a whole host of the original early astronaut corps and select people since that time frame,” she says. “It’s just unbelievable. I don’t know what I did to deserve it but I’m very honored to have been selected.”

Dr. Janet Kavandi

Out of the 7.5 billion people on the planet, Kavandi is among 546 who have gone to space. She is a veteran of three shuttle missions, has logged about 33 days in space and has traveled more than 13 million miles.

Kavandi’s first mission to space was on the shuttle Discovery in 1998. She recalls heading to the elevators to get onto the aircraft and getting strapped into her seat. She was laying on her back as the rocket faced up. The doors closed and the countdown started shortly after.

Kavandi remembers her heart starting to beat faster and faster as the countdown continued and liftoff drew closer. The engines began to roar. The vehicle began to swing back and forth as it pushed forward, then straightened back up. The crew waited for the solid rocket motors to ignite. Kavandi says that’s when it all sank it.

“I remember giggling. It was involuntary,” Kavandi says. “It just came out because at that moment, you realize, oh my gosh, this is really happening. I’m really going to space. Tears are rolling down my face and into my ears. It’s not because you’re afraid, it’s just because you cannot believe that all those years, all those classes in school, all that patience, all that hard work and you’re finally getting to go to space. That was just the ultimate feeling, probably of any flight was that first liftoff and realizing all of your dreams had come true.”

The ship hurled upwards and headed for outer space.

A vivid memory Kavandi has is when the shuttle overlooked the Earth during darkness.

“At night, if it’s very clear, you can see the lights of the cities. We could pick out England. You could pick out London. You could see the English Channel. You could see all the major cities in Europe,” Kavandi says. “We could see Paris, for instance. Italy sticks out very clearly. You could see Rome and then you go across a very dark Mediterranean. Then you could see Israel. It was very bright and lit up. You can see Northern Africa and you can see Egypt and Cairo. You can see the Nile (River) Delta and the snake of the Nile is all lit up, especially at the Delta. As you come down Africa, it gets very dark. There are not a lot of cities across northern Africa, but you can see the fires of villages and things like that. Then there were a lot of thunderstorms over Africa.”

She remembers watching the way the lightning in the thunderstorms would pop.

“The tops of the clouds looked like popcorn popping. It was just this bright light in this strange pattern with an electric charge would go for hundreds of miles and you could see the lightning travel down those clouds as you followed over that. Then the moonlight on the ocean as you came out across, off of the continents and onto the ocean. It was just such a beautiful path that I still remember that seeing the Earth so clearly in the way it looks at night,” she says.

Kavandi says one of the activities she enjoyed doing in space was sleep on the ceiling.

“You can never do that anywhere else,” she chuckles. “I would always put my sleeping bag upside down and hang from the ceiling. You’re not really hanging – you’re floating there. It’s kind of cool because when you wake up, your mind naturally wants to find the floor and up and down. There really isn’t one there so much. It’s kind of fun to let your brain figure that out.”

Kavandi says her father was key in her pursuit of becoming an astronaut. She describes herself as an outdoorsy person and says she enjoyed climbing trees, fishing, milking the cows, flying with her dad in his plane and gardening.

At night, Kavandi and her father enjoyed looking at the stars. On their farm in southwest Missouri’s Cassville, they talked about the night sky, the satellites going around the planet, what the Earth looked like and watched shooting stars.

“I think it just started that spark of interest in what it would be like to fly in space,” she says. “All through my life as the space program grew, we were flying people and we were going to the moon, it was just something I thought would be the ultimate job. If you could do that, at least I thought that would be the highest point a person could achieve in their career.”

When Kavandi was eight years old, her parents died in an airplane crash.

“They never knew that I got to fly to space. I think my dad would be very proud because he was the one that encouraged me to be strong and never give up, never quit at things. He gave me doctors kits for Christmas presents instead of Barbie dolls,” she says. “He gave me things that made me believe that I could be more than the stereotypical female role at the time and never even thought twice about it. I owe, I think, most of my success to how he made me feel about my own capabilities. I’m hoping he would be very proud that the kid who sat on his lap actually got to go to space and see what the world was like from there.”

Kavandi and her sister moved to Carthage to live with their mother’s sister and her husband. Her uncle built engines for a space shuttle at the NASA center in Huntsville, AL.

Kavandi worked hard and looked at biographies of other astronauts to see what work it took to get to space. Kavandi graduated as class valedictorian in 1977.

She credits both Missouri Southern University in Joplin and Missouri S&T in Rolla for giving her a valuable education. She received an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Missouri Southern State University in 1980, a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1982, and a doctorate in analytical chemistry from the University of Washington in 1990.

“I feel that the Missouri school system is excellent. I’m not sure that everyone realizes how good it is,” Kavandi says.

Kavandi is the director of NASA’s John Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio and oversees about 3,000 workers doing cutting-edge research. She was part of NASA’s 2017 eclipse broadcast in Jefferson City.

Induction into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame is April 6 at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Listen to the full interview with Dr. Janet Kavandi:

Copyright © 2019 · Missourinet

A Missouri native and astronaut has been nominated for induction into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame. Dr. Janet Kavandi was born in southwest Missouri’s Springfield and grew up in Cassville and Carthage.

Dr. Janet Kavandi

Kavandi was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1994 as a member of the 15th class of U.S. astronauts. She has served on three space flights, logging more than 33 days in space and orbiting the Earth 535 times. During her time in the astronaut office, she supported the International Space Station payload integration, capsule communications and robotics and served as deputy chief.

Kavandi is the director of NASA’s John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland where she is responsible for planning, organizing and directing the activities required in accomplishing the missions assigned to the center. The Glenn staff consists of more than 3,200 civil service and support contractor employees and has an annual budget of approximately $625 million. Her center is affected by the federal government shutdown.

Kavandi was also a part of NASA’s 2017 total eclipse broadcast in Jefferson City. The Capital City was one of the communities considered as one of the best viewing places during the historic event.

Kavandi is a graduate of Missouri Southern State University in Joplin and Missouri S & T in Rolla.

Copyright © 2018 · Missourinet

Efforts to reopen Tarkio College as a two-year technical institution took a step forward this week. At a special presentation inside Thompson Hall on the Tarkio College campus, assistant to the college president, John Davis, says an application for certification has been submitted to the Missouri Department of Higher Education. Davis says the decision to open the college’s doors now lies in the state’s hands.

Photo courtesy of Tarkio College Alumni Association

“We believe it will take anywhere from 45 to 90 days,” Davis says on the state’s application process. “We will keep the pressure on the state. One of our board members, who actually is kind of our chief engineer when it comes to the buildings, lives right outside of Jefferson City. He’ll be going in on a regular basis to visit and make sure they are moving along on that. We’re optimistic it will be closer to 45 (days) than the 90.”

To finalize certification, the state requires the college to have $150,000 in escrow. Davis says a “Founder’s Fund” campaign was kicked off in June and has raised $212,000 toward a year-end goal of $250,000. Those funds will help keep the college open for the first year and maintain lower costs for students.

In the meantime, Davis says work will continue to shore up a few facility needs inside Thompson Hall, which already has an entire floor of classrooms fully equipped for student use.

“We have some classrooms identified on the first floor for some of our technical programs that still need to be outfitted with the equipment to teach those classes,” Davis says. “We’ll also need to clean them up and paint them. The biggest hurdle right now is that we have a fire alarm system that was built in 1968 that has to be updated.”

Davis believes regional businesses need workers with specialized training and skills, which led to the idea for Tarkio College to become a two-year technical institution rather than a four-year college.

“The programs we’ve identified for our application are plumbing, wind energy, and computer technology,” Davis says. “Also, we’ll have a series of academic development courses for students that do not have the skills to compete at a two-year or four-year college.”

Various regional businesses and manufacturers attended this week’s presentation about plans to reopen the school, which closed in 1992. Davis says it was important to host a wide variety of employers to gauge expectations from students entering a technical institution.

“It was really a combination of two groups today,” he says. “One group was business and industry, and the other group was different economic development groups. We had the Missouri Department of Economic Development here, Northwest Development, and Atchison County Development Corporation. All of those groups have access to funding for some of the repairs we have to do, and some of the money we need for startup costs.”

Pending the state’s decision on certification, Davis says the vision is to reopen Tarkio College sometime during 2019, specifically the summer semester. Within five years, the goal is to offer technical and career-oriented certificates in five areas to 200 students a term.

By Brent Barnett of Missourinet affiliate KMA in Shenandoah, Iowa