Janice Voss graduated from Minnechaug Regional High School in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, in 1972. She earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Purdue University while working on a co-op at the Johnson Space Center. She earned an S.M. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 1977. After studying space physics at Rice University from 1977 to 1978, she went on to earn a doctorate in aeronautics/astronautics from MIT in 1987. Janice Voss was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1990 and flew as a mission specialist on missions STS-57 (1993), STS-63 (1995), STS-83 (1997), STS-94 (1997) and STS-99 (2000). All of her flights included another female astronaut as well. During her career as an astronaut, she participated in the first Shuttle rendezvous with the Mir space station on STS-63: it flew around the station, testing communications and inflight manoeuvres for later missions, but did not actually dock. As an STS-99 crew member on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, she and her fellow crew members worked continuously in shifts to produce what was at the time the most accurate digital topographical map of the Earth.

From October 2004 to November 2007, Janice Voss was Science Director for NASA’s Kepler Space Observatory, an Earth-orbiting satellite designed to find Earth-like extrasolar planets in nearby solar systems. It was launched in March 2009 and was still operational at the time of her death at age 55 from breast cancer. At the Astronaut Office Station Branch, she served as the Payloads Lead. She also worked for Orbital Sciences Corporation in flight operations support. The VOSS Model is a scaled model of the solar system, dedicated to Janice Voss, located at Purdue University’s Discovery Park in West Lafayette, Indiana. The Cygnus CRS Orb-2 capsule was named SS Janice Voss in her honor.