In , Ellen Ochoa became the first Hispanic female astronaut. Her first mission was a nine-day mission aboard the Discovery space shuttle.
Over the span of her career, Ochoa served on four space missions. Before becoming an astronaut, Ochoa earned three patents as for optical systems through her work as an engineer.
She co-invented an optical inspection system, an optical object recognition method, and a noise removal method for imagery. She became the Intelligent Systems Technology Branch manager at Ames and was chosen to be an astronaut in As an astronaut, Ochoa logged nearly space flight hours. Throughout her career, Ochoa has been recognized for her many accomplishments. Four schools have also been named in her honor. Ochoa is married with two children.
She and her family live in Houston. Ochoa and other women pioneers in the U. I saw their presentation and it clicked — applied science, specifically applied geography, and I applied immediately. I certainly was not expecting to find out that NASA had an internship opportunity in Mobile, Alabama, that day, but the meatball logo caught my eye.
The next thing I knew I had applied, been accepted, and was sitting in an office in the local health department pretending to know what I was doing. By the spring we had both been asked to step into the Center Lead role at our respective locations.
