Nicole Stott’s career connects engineering, saturation diving, human spaceflight and art in a way very few résumés can.

That makes her an especially strong Career Journalist subject after our Top 10 Toughest Jobs in the World in 2026. Stott has worked in two of the most unforgiving environments on that list: beneath the ocean and beyond Earth.

Stott did not begin as an astronaut. She joined NASA as an operations engineer working around Space Shuttle hardware at Kennedy Space Center. Her assignments eventually included Shuttle Flow Director for Endeavour, Orbiter Project Engineer for Columbia, convoy commander for shuttle landings and flight-simulation engineering used to train astronaut pilots. NASA’s current biography describes her today as an astronaut, aquanaut, engineer and artist.

Stott discusses the career that took her from underwater exploration to spaceflight and art.

Before flying in space, Stott lived underwater for 18 days as a crewmember on NASA’s NEEMO 9 mission at the Aquarius undersea laboratory. NASA has described that mission as a saturation dive, an environment designed to help crews rehearse isolation, technical operations and teamwork under conditions where outside help is limited.

Then came orbit. Stott flew two space missions and accumulated 104 days in space. She became the 10th woman to perform a spacewalk, operated the International Space Station’s robotic arm for the first capture of a free-flying Japanese HTV cargo vehicle and served aboard the final mission of Space Shuttle Discovery.

That places her beside other multi-environment explorers we have documented, including Sian Proctor and Kathryn Sullivan.

Stott also did something almost completely different while in orbit: she painted. NASA credits her as the first person to paint a watercolor in space. After retiring from NASA in 2015, she moved into a full-time career combining art, spaceflight experience and STEAM education.

In WIRED’s Tech Support, Stott answers public questions about spaceflight, NASA careers and living in orbit.

Her résumé is still expanding. In 2026, Max Space lists Stott as its Lead Astronaut, bringing her operational experience into the design of the company’s Thunderbird Station habitat.

The pattern across Stott’s career is not simply adventure. It is technical competence transferred from one demanding environment to another: spacecraft processing, underwater habitation, orbital operations, robotics, spacewalking and finally art and design.

That is exactly the kind of résumé this series is looking for: public, well documented, visually verifiable and difficult to reduce to a single job title.

---

BitcoinVersus.Tech Editor’s Note:
We volunteer daily to ensure the credibility of the information on this platform is Verifiably True. If you would like to support to help further secure the integrity of our research initiatives, please donate using the QR code provided

For best QR-code scanning results, please scan this donation code from a desktop or larger screen. Mobile screens may prevent camera recognition.