His three space shuttle missions include the first flight of Endeavour in May 1992, during which he made three space walks totalling 17 hours to capture and repair an Intelsat communications satellite. One of these was the first space walk to involve three people. During his career, Hieb logged more than 750 hours in space. He joined NASA in 1979 to work in crew procedure development and crew activity planning and was selected as an astronaut in 1985.