Mike Fincke

An Astronaut’s Journey from MIT to Orbit and Back Again

When I left MIT in 1989, the International Space Station had not yet been built, the Soviet Union was still a Cold War adversary, and commercial human spaceflight was far in the future.

Over the next three decades, I had the privilege of helping build and live aboard the ISS, flying with Russian cosmonauts, carrying the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to orbit on the Space Shuttle, and helping develop two new American human spacecraft, Crew Dragon and Starliner.

This talk is a personal journey through that remarkable period in human spaceflight, with a few stories about the people, engineering challenges, successes, and lessons along the way.

Now, after thirty years at NASA, I have returned to MIT as a professor. It seems like a good moment to look back at how far we have come, and forward at what the next generation might build.

Biography: Astronaut, alum, and retired Air Force Colonel E. Michael Fincke (SB ‘89) has returned home to MIT. Following his departure from NASA after a 30-year career that included four spaceflights totaling 549 days in space and nine spacewalks, Col. Fincke officially joined the faculty of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics as a full-time Professor of the Practice on September 1, 2026. Joining the Human Systems Laboratory (HSL), he will teach and develop courses, advise undergraduate and graduate students, and contribute his considerable expertise to research and education in human spaceflight, flight software, integrated testing, system safety, and spacecraft and habitat design. He brings an operational spaceflight perspective to the department, connecting engineering design with human performance, mission operations, leadership, and decision-making in high-consequence environments. (Adapted from AeroAstro)