Janice Voss, Space Shuttle Astronaut

According to the NYT: Janice Voss, a space shuttle astronaut and scientist who explored the behavior of fire in weightlessness, how plants adapt to extraterrestrial flight and an array of other phenomena while logging nearly 19 million miles circling Earth, died on Monday at a hospital in Scottsdale, Ariz. She was 55 and lived in Houston.

She read A Wrinkle in Time as a child, and it inspired her to become an astronaut. She even took a copy with her on the space shuttle.