Mary Cleave, veteran of two NASA spaceflights and a Colorado State University alum, died Nov. 27. She was 76.
Cleave, who graduated from CSU with a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences in 1969, was honored by CSU in 2015 with the William Morgan Award Alumni Achievement Award.
She was first selected as an astronaut in 1980. Her first mission was aboard space shuttle Atlantis in November of 1985, and she returned to space on the Atlantis in May 1989.
Cleave was one of the first women to complete NASA space flight training, to fly in a T-38 training jet, and to complete two space shuttle missions as flight engineer and operate the shuttle’s robotic arm. She has logged a total of 10 days, 22 hours, 2 minutes, 24 seconds in space, orbited the earth 172 times and traveled 3.94 million miles.
Her favorite memories of Fort Collins included riding her motorcycle around Horsetooth Reservoir, she told SOURCE in 2015. She completed CSU’s then two-year pre-veterinary program before changing her major to biological sciences.
In 2015, she shared her advice to graduate to be open to new things.
“Keep an open mind,” she said. “Because when you have an open mind, you run into stuff that you wouldn’t normally consider. And take advantage of opportunities that position yourself to do what you love.”
