Shannon O ' Donnel Shannon O ' Donnel was an ancestor of Kathryn Janeway ' s and her greatest inspiration for joining Starfleet . She was also a consulting engineer on the Millennium Gate project that was completed in 2012 in Portage Creek , Indiana on Earth . History . O ' Donnel was an aerospace engineer and trained to be an astronaut with NASA . Her class came up with the slogan " Next stop . . . Mars " , which was used by NASA ' s media department . Unfortunately , she did not make it through the training program . After leaving NASA , O ' Donnel worked in the aerospace industry but eventually lost her job . She found herself unemployed and homeless and began traveling extensively , keeping a personal log by means of a small tape recorder as she did so . It was during this time that she made plans to visit a cousin of hers in Florida . Midway through her journey she found herself stranded when her car broke down in the small town of Portage Creek , Indiana , where she met Henry Janeway . Janeway was a resident of Portage Creek , the future home of the Millennium Gate , and owned a little bookstore , Alexandria Books . O ' Donnel met Janeway in his bookstore which was the only store in town that had not closed in order to make way for construction of the immense project . Both Henry Janeway , and his son , Jason , were initially suspicious of O ' Donnel but welcomed her nonetheless , and he even offered her a place to stay until her car was fixed . The next day O ' Donnel and Jason watched in front of the bookstore as Henry argued with Gerald Moss , who was being interviewed by Marci Collins of " 3 Action News " . The next day , as O ' Donnel sat in a local bar planning her departure , Moss approached her . Moss , who had worked at NASA at the same time as O ' Donnel , told her that a classmate of hers made it into to the space program and was scheduled for four months of duty on the space station . Moss offered O ' Donnel a job as a consulting engineer on the Millennium Gate project if she managed to convince Henry Janeway to give up his bookstore . Because O ' Donnel genuinely believed in some aspects of the project , she made several attempts to convince the classical - leaning Janeway to sell his store . Despite a mutual attraction , Janeway ' s resistance remained . Even though she failed to convince him to sell , Moss told her the project could still use her at the alternate building site of the Millennium Gate in Canton , Ohio . When leaving town , O ' Donnel realized that she did not want to leave Janeway and returned the same night . She talked to him and Janeway decided that he might re - open his bookstore in the Millennium Gate . Just before midnight December 31 , 2000 , O ' Donnel and Janeway left the Alexandria Books bookstore , which then closed for the last time . Eventually , Shannon O ' Donnel married Henry Janeway and together they had several children and grandchildren and lived in Indiana . Legacy . Unknown to her , she became an inspiration for a distant relative fifteen generations later : Kathryn Janeway who heard about her in family gatherings . However the facts about her life were greatly exaggerated : it was believed that O ' Donnel was instrumental in building the Millennium Gate , one of the " first woman astronaut s " and a participant in the early Mars projects . In 2365 a Ferengi historian researching the early space travel of humanity , collected her family picture , and wanted to market it as a nostalgic gift item . Kathryn Janeway – with the help of Seven of Nine and Neelix – discovered her picture , as well that her role and who she was differed vastly from what she had believed all her life . However , Seven and others reminded her that historic facts were irrelevant , as Shannon was an inspiration for Janeway to pursue her dreams and therefore an important part of her history . ( ) Appendices . Background information . Shannon O ' Donnel was played by Kate Mulgrew . Apocrypha . In the novels " The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh , Volume One " and " Volume Two " , Shannon O ' Donnel works at Area 51 ( aka the Groom Lake Facility ) under the supervision of Jeff Carlson . She is described as " on loan " from NASA . After being contacted by Roberta Lincoln , she helps to create , and later steal , the first spacecraft . In the " " story " Seeds of Dissent " in " Infinity ' s Prism " , Shannon O ' Donnel appears as the senior engineer of the .