posted 09-04-2025 08:38 PM               

“You know how astronauts have the right stuff? The stuff you have is wrong,” astronaut Michael Massimino says to hapless engineer Howard Wolowitz on an episode of the CBS TV sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. Massimino, of course, was playing a fictionalized version of himself, but in real life, unlike Wolowitz, he does have the right stuff­—and he has two space shuttle missions under his belt to prove it.

Massimino applied to be a NASA astronaut multiple times before finally being selected as an astronaut candidate in 1996. He made it to space on STS-109 in 2002 and STS-125 in 2009. Both of his flights were missions that serviced the Hubble Space Telescope, during which he logged 30 hours outside the shuttle while tending to the telescope.

In this year's John H. Glenn Lecture in Space History, Massimino will discuss his spaceflight experience and how he continues to generate excitement about space exploration.

This lecture series is made possible by the generous support of Boeing.