He logged over 1 393 hours in space on seven space shuttle flights, which is a record. These included the December 1998 Endeavour flight that was the first assembly mission to the International Space Station (ISS), during which Ross performed three space walks totalling more than 21 hours. In April 2002, he flew on Atlantis to the ISS doing assembly work that required two space walks. He had logged more than 58 hours on space walks. He went on to become the chief of the Vehicle Integration Test Office at the Johnson Space Center. Ross joined to NASA's Johnson Space Center in 1979, and was chosen as an astronaut in 1980.