He flew with the Discovery space shuttle flight that deployed the Ulysses spacecraft in October 1990. He also flew on the first Endeavour space shuttle mission in May 1992. He left NASA that year to become director of Process Improvement Technology at Lockheed Space Operations and from 1994 to 1996 served as vice-president and director for Shuttle Engineering at the company, then renamed United States Alliance. He was selected as an astronaut in 1987.