It’s an exclusive club to which 10 UT System graduates belong. They each have ventured into space as an astronaut—some multiple times, and some became news along the way.
Barry “Butch” Wilmore returned to Earth in March after an unexpected nine-month stay aboard the International Space Station. A one- to two-week trip to the station turned into a longer sojourn after the Boeing Starliner he piloted experienced technical difficulties. This was his third flight to space. During his years as an astronaut, he was the first American to pilot a space shuttle and subsequently walk in space.
“Not one hour would go by that I wouldn’t think, ‘I can’t believe we do this; we put humans in a one-man space capsule and send them out into the vacuum of space to work—and we do it safely,’” he says in a 2017 interview.
In 2015, Scott Kelly spent a planned one year in space as part of research into spaceflight’s effects on the human body. In all, he logged more than 520 days in space on four space flights.
“When I look from where I was at 18 to where I am at the end of my career, it seems like a giant leap, but it was small, manageable steps along the way that allowed me to achieve something very hard,” he says in a 2017 issue of the magazine.
Margaret Rhea Seddon was one of the first six women accepted by NASA into the astronaut program in 1978. She flew on three Space Shuttle flights.
“Sometimes, you have to dream big and apply where you don’t think you’re going to get in, but you have to try,” she says in an interview from 2017. “And don’t be afraid to go first.”
Astronauts who have graduated from a UT campus:
- Henry Hartsfield Jr. (Knoxville ’71)
- Margaret Rhea Seddon (HSC ’73)
- Dominic Gorie (Knoxville ’90)
- Chris Hadfield (Knoxville ’92)
- Jeffrey Ashby (Knoxville ’93)
- Joe Edwards Jr. (Knoxville ’94)
- Barry “Butch” Wilmore (Knoxville ’94)
- Scott Kelly (Knoxville ’96)
- William Oefelein (Knoxville ’98)
- Randolph Bresnik (Knoxville ’02)
From the Archives
“I thought Napoleon was dead. So did my husband.”
Thus begins Marilou Bonham Thompson’s essay about the 1957 graduate’s years of living in Europe. It’s one of several pieces in the June 1967 issue of Tennessee Alumnus that directs alumni to think about the future while reflecting on the past.
In a piece taken from that year’s graduation speech by Quill Cope, he states, “The law of life is a law of growth and change.” He urged graduates to apply their acquired knowledge as they face ever accelerating new developments. “Man cannot stand still in this battle of life and expect to be successful in his profession.”
Instead, chances must be taken, whether moving abroad or in a career.
Our Tennessee was published as the Tennessee Alumnus from 1917 to 2020. Scanned archives of past issues of the magazine can be accessed online through UT Knoxville’s Digital Collections Library.
