NASA Career
Ashby was selected as an astronaut candidate in December 1994 at age 40. He was initially scheduled to be the pilot on STS-85 in 1997 but was replaced due to a family illness. He piloted space shuttle missions STS-93 in July 1999 and STS-100 in April 2001, and commanded mission STS-112 in October 2002.
His first flight, aboard Columbia, deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory and was the first U.S. space mission commanded by a female, Eileen Collins. Ashby's latter two flights aboard Endeavour and Atlantis were the sixth and ninth assembly missions for the International Space Station. He has traveled over 11 million miles, flown 436 orbits around the Earth, and logged over 660 hours (27.5 days) in space.
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