Ellen Ochoa
BORN: MAY 10, 1958, IN LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
When she was in fifth grade, Ellen was already setting goals: “I wanted to be class president.” Even though her mother raised the family of five children by herself, she found time to instill in her children the courage to take a leap at an early age. Ellen’s mother enrolled in college and took one class every semester while taking care of her children. “Mom didn’t graduate until twenty-two years later, but she did finish,” Ellen recalls. “That’s what I got from her example. I’ve always liked school.”
When Ellen graduated from high school in 1975, Stanford University immediately offered her a four-year scholarship, but she declined it so she could stay closer to home to help her family. She went to San Diego State University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Physics as valedictorian of her class with a perfect GPA. She went on to receive her doctorate in Electrical Engineering from Stanford, where she played the flute in the Stanford Symphony Orchestra.
When Ellen was not bicycling, playing volleyball, or earning her pilot’s license, she was propelled to learn. Many different things caught her attention. Because of her many interests, ability to learn quickly, and her love for teamwork, Ellen was selected as a research engineer to work at the NASA Ames Research Center after graduation.
Ellen played with light beams, examined rays and electrons of lasers and holograms; with a team she became a co-inventor in the development of optical inspection systems. She supervised thirty-five engineer-scientists. Ellen’s motto: “Only you put limitations on yourself about what you can achieve.”
Ellen’s next goal was to perform scientific experiments in space, using her inventions. But to go on a space mission, she needed to become an astronaut first. Growing up, it had never occurred to her. “When I was a girl, I never imagined being an astronaut,” she said. “It wasn’t until the first six female astronauts were selected in 1978 that women could even think of it as a possible career path.” In 1983 Sally Ride became the first woman to travel into space. By this time, Ellen had graduated and was working at NASA, and she was inspired to do the same. Ellen had confidence about her strengths in many areas—engineering, music, flying planes, scientific inventions, and working in groups.
Ellen was selected as an astronaut in January 1990. Training to become an astronaut is rigorous. She learned to scuba dive in a tank so she could experience weightlessness, to spacewalk, to fly in T-38 jets, and use robotic arms in a Shuttle training aircraft. “I was in training for three years before my first mission. Some astronauts have waited ten years, even sixteen.”
¡Arriba! Up, up, up, up! In 1993, Ellen flew into space as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-56. On the nine-day mission, two hundred miles from earth, going five miles per second, she controlled the “robotic arm” and captured a satellite used for the study of the sun. Being an astronaut excited Ellen because “it allows you to learn continuously, like you do in school,” she said.
Ellen zoomed into space on four space missions from 1993 to 2002. In each journey, with her team, she performed different maneuvers of increasing difficulty.
Out in space, Ellen marveled at Earth: “How beautiful and fragile it is.” After a long day with the robotic arm maneuvering space walkers, Ellen added water to cookies, and ate dried fruit—and tortillas. Weightless, she did a front-flip while brushing her teeth. And then she e-mailed her husband and two children.
Dr. Ellen Ochoa, the first Latina astronaut, became the first Latina director of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. She has worked toward human habitats on the moon and eventually, Mars. And she has a new goal: to establish summer camps for children like her, who never dreamed of riding the stars many moons ago.