She logged more than 1 318 hours in space on five shuttle flights. These include the Atlantis mission (January 1997) to dock with the Russian space station Mir, and a further Atlantis mission (February 2001) to construct and supply the International Space Station (ISS). She has since been assigned to three branches involving the ISS, space shuttle, and advanced projects. Ivins joined the Johnson Space Center as an engineer in 1974, was selected as an astronaut in 1984, and departed NASA in 2010.