MarsCon 2005
"Galactic Pirates & Mercenaries"
Airport Marriott Hotel
Bloomington, MN

March 4-6, 2005

Stephanie Gannaway-Osborn - MarsCon 2005 Rocket Scientist GoH

Born in 1960 and a child of the Space Age, Stephanie Gannaway-Osborn grew up in Tennessee, the elder daughter of a computer programmer and an artist.

Her first notice of space came at the age of six with the catastrophic Apollo One fire, and even as a child she carefully followed the space program, declaring to any and all who would listen her intent of working in the field "when I grow up." Oftentimes, friends and teachers would scoff -- this was rural Tennessee in the '60s, after all -- where boys grew up to be farmers or store clerks, and girls to be housewives and mothers.

But Stephanie's parents instilled in her the belief that she could be whoever she wanted to be, and this got her through school into the undergraduate program at Austin Peay State University, where she earned a B.S. with majors in physics, chemistry, and mathematics, minoring in geology, and also attending the Honors program. Graduate school was at Vanderbilt University, where she earned an M.S. in astronomy with graduate minors in physics and geology. She was in the PhD program at the University of Alabama, Huntsville when she was assigned the night shift as a timeline engineer on STS-35/Astro-1. Actually working in the space program proved more educational and far more fascinating than sitting in a classroom, and the latter degree remained unfinished as Stephanie left the doctoral program and threw herself into the job wholeheartedly.

Somewhere along the way, this scientist took a page from her family history and likewise married an artist, Darrell Osborn. They settled in Madison, AL, where they live with a spunky, sassy little 18-year-old Tonkinese cat named Anna. Stephanie also has a Thoroughbred horse, Celeste, on which she trail-rides and plays polo.

Stephanie has worked in the civilian and military space programs for close to twenty years, and has seen and experienced a lot of interesting things, although she has yet to understand quite where the time went. Her experience includes work on a number of Space Shuttle missions: STS-45, STS-47, STS-67, STS-75, STS-87, and STS-94; as well as working on the International Space Station.

Experience: Astronomer/Astrophysicist assigned to USA SDC SETAC; Regular guest lecturer for the United States Space Academy; Lead Timeline Engineer on STS-35 (ASTRO-1); Lead Execution TLE on STS-47 (SL-J) and STS-45 (ATLAS-1) missions; Worked on Mission Planning and Payload Operations Data File Team for the International Space Station; Execution TLE on Microgravity Science Lab 1 reflight mission; the list goes on and on; also she is a previous speaker at Con*Stellation, Kubla Kon, MidSouthCon, and DeepSouthCon.

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