Michelle Rucker

Michelle Rucker began her engineering career in the Houston oil industry while pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Rice University. She began her NASA career in 1986 as a test engineer at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, supervising hazardous materials tests and managing a hypervelocity impact research laboratory. Michelle has served as a system engineer in the Space Shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) Programs, developing environmental control and life support systems, supervised spacesuit and Extravehicular Activity (EVA) tools projects, and on the Constellation Program’s Orion and Altair lunar lander test and verification teams.