A veteran of four space flights, Robinson flew on the Discovery space shuttle mission in August 1997, and was the payload commander aboard the Discovery flight in October 1998. He was flight engineer on Discovery in July–August 2005 (the first space shuttle mission since the Columbia disaster of 2003) and on Endeavour in 2010. Robinson joined NASA's Ames Research Center in 1979 as a research scientist, became chief of the Experimental Flow Physics Branch at the Langley Research Center in 1990, and returned to Langley in 1994 as leader of Aerodynamics and Acoustics for NASA's General Aviation Technology programme. Robinson logged more than 48 days in space, including more than 20 hours of space walking, before retiring as an astronaut in 2012