Kathryn D. Sullivan: From Outer Space to Under the Sea

For most people, Kathryn D. Sullivan is best known for her years with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). After all, she was selected as one of the first group of six women astronauts for the U.S. in 1978. She is a veteran of three Space Shuttle missions, including the flight where she performed the first extra-vehicular activity (EVA) by an American woman and participated in the mission that launched the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) into space.

Beyond her years as an astronaut, Sullivan has also ventured into many other fields of work and study. She is a trained scientist with a Ph.D. in geology. In addition, she has carried out extensive oceanographic research on the floors of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. She has also served in the U.S. Naval Reserve (USNR) first, as a lieutenant commander and eventually, captain. Her duties with the U.S. Navy included command of a unit of oceanographers and meteorologists based at Naval Air Station Dallas.

Sullivan’s public service extended beyond NASA and the USNR. In 2011, the Obama administration nominated, and the U.S. Senate confirmed, her as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction and Deputy Administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Moreover, starting in early 2013, she served as acting NOAA Administrator. The following year, she was confirmed by the Senate as the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and simultaneously, as NOAA Administrator. She remained in these positions until early 2017.

Sullivan also served as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ohio’s Center of Science and Industry (COSI). Under her leadership, COSI enhanced its impact on science teaching in the classroom, as well as its national reputation as an innovator of hands-on, inquiry-based science learning resources. Moreover, Sullivan was selected for the 2017 Charles A. Lindbergh Chair of Aerospace History Fellowship, at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM). During her time with the museum as a Fellow, she focused her research energies on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Based on this research, Sullivan wrote her book, Handprints on Hubble: An Astronaut’s Story of Invention, which was released in 2019.

In 2020, she ventured aboard a specially equipped submarine to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench of the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first woman to reach the deepest known point of all of Earth’s oceans. Moreover, she became the first person to travel to both the Challenger Deep and aboard the Space Shuttle, Challenger (and, later, Discovery) into outer space. Also, late that year, Sullivan was named a volunteer member of President-Elect Biden’s presidential transition Agency Review team to help facilitate transition efforts connected to the Commerce Department. In 2021, President Biden appointed her to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. As can be seen from her very busy life and multiple careers, Sullivan is certainly a true renaissance woman.

The Kathryn D. Sullivan Papers are available for research at the National Air and Space Museum Archives. One notable set of documents is her printed flight logs while with NASA. These logs list all her flights aboard trainer aircraft (almost always Northrop T-38 Talon jets) from the late 1970s until the early 1990s. Included in these logs is an entry from her STS-45 spaceflight aboard the Space Shuttle, Discovery!