Kathryn Thornton, a veteran astronaut and UVA Professor Emerita, has logged over 975 hours in space, including a record-setting mission on the maiden flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour and four space walks.

Kathryn C. Thornton, Professor Emerita at the University of Virginia, is a distinguished astronaut and educator. Selected by NASA in 1984, she flew on four space missions, logging over 975 hours in space and more than 21 hours of extravehicular activity. Her notable missions included the first service mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, a classified Department of Defense mission, and satellite rescue and microgravity experiments.

After leaving NASA in 1996, Thornton became a professor at the University of Virginia, where she worked for 22 years before retiring to hike the Appalachian Trail in 2019. Her contributions to space exploration and education earned her numerous awards, including induction into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2010. Currently, she serves on the boards of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation and remains active in the aerospace community.