His wife, Tamara Elizabeth "Tammy" Jernigan, Ph.D., is also an astronaut, having entered the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1986 and retired in 2001. She flew on five Space Shuttle program missions (three on Columbia and one each on Endeavour and Discovery) and logged 1512 hours in space. In her last mission on Discovery in 1999, she performed an extra-vehicular activity for about eight hours.
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Dr. Wisoff retired from NASA in September 2001 to join the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he served as Deputy Program Manager for Systems Engineering at the National Ignition Facility.
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His special honors include NASA Space Flight Medals (1993, 1994, 1997); NCR Faculty Award of Excellence (1989); National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship 1980-1983; Physics Prize and Shannon Award from the University of Virginia (1980).
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Wisoff's next outer-space flight was on the Discovery (launched October 11, 2000). During the 13-day flight, the seven member crew attached the Z1 Truss and Pressurized Mating Adapter 3 to the International Space Station, using Discovery's robotic arm, and performed four space walks to configure these elements. This expansion of the ISS opened the door for future assembly missions and prepared the station for its first resident crew. Dr. Wisoff totaled 13 hours and 16 minutes of EVA time in two space walks. The STS-92 mission was accomplished in 202 orbits, traveling 5.3 million miles in almost 13 days.
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Wisoff's next journey was on the space shuttle Atlantis (January 12-22, 1997). The crew were the fifth to dock with Russia's Space Station Mir, and the second to exchange U.S. astronauts. The mission also carried the Spacehab double module, providing additional mid-deck locker space for secondary experiments. In five days of docked operations, more than three tons of food, water, experiment equipment and samples were moved back and forth between the two spacecraft. Following 160 orbits of the Earth in 244 hours, 55 minutes, the STS-81 mission concluded with a landing at Kennedy Space Center, ending a 3.9 million mile journey.
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Wisoff's second space flight mission was on the space shuttle partnering with Endeavour (September 30 to October 11, 1994). The focus was the Space Radar Lab-2 mission. As part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth, the crew collaborated in Endeavour's cargo bay to study Earth's surface and atmosphere, creating radar images of Earth's surface environment and mapping global production and transport of carbon monoxide pollution. Real-time crew observed many environmental conditions, along with over 14,000 photographs aided the science team in interpreting the SRL data. The mission was a highly successful test of technology intended for long-term environmental and geological monitoring of planet Earth. Following 183 orbits of the Earth in 269 hours and 46 minutes, the mission took about 11 days.
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His first space flight was on the shuttle Endeavour (June 21 to July 1, 1993), with the primary objective of retrieving the European Retrievable Carrier satellite, using the Remote Monitoring System. The mission featured the first flight of Spacehab, which carried 22 individual flight experiments in materials and life sciences research. During the mission, Wisoff conducted a 5-hour, 50-minute spacewalk during which the communications antennas were manually positioned for latching, and various extravehicular activity tools and techniques were evaluated for use on future missions.
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Selected by NASA in January 1990, Wisoff became an astronaut in July 1991 and qualified for flight assignment as a mission specialist.
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Dr. Wisoff joined the faculty of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Rice University. His research focused on the development of new vacuum ultraviolet and high intensity laser sources. He also collaborated with researchers from regional Texas Medical Centers on the applications of lasers to the reconstruction of damaged nerves. He worked with researchers at Rice University on new techniques for growing and evaluating semiconductor materials using lasers.
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This NASA astronaut's educational experience includes: graduation from Norfolk Academy in Virginia, in 1976; Bachelor of Science Degree in Physics (with Highest Distinction) from University of Virginia in 1980: Master of Science degree from Stanford University in 1982; and a Doctorate in Applied Physics from Stanford in 1986. He did his graduate work on the development of short wavelength lasers.
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