“I am committed to space flight, human exploration, learning how to do more and more. I like the fact that it is much bigger than myself, important to my country and to the world. I like being able to contribute in this way.”

Ellen Ochoa was born in 1958 in Los Angeles, California. She was the middle of 5 children, and her grandparents had immigrated from Sonora, Mexico. Neither of her parents had college degrees. She received a bachelor’s degree from San Diego State in 1980, a master’s from Stanford in 1981, and a PhD from Stanford in 1985 in electrical engineering. Her research (in school, at Sandia national lab, and at NASA Ames research center) focused on optical systems for information processing, helping develop automated space exploration (“helping computers see”). Ellen had three patents for her work. She was selected in 1990 to be an astronaut to look after flight software, computer hardware, and robotics. In 1993, she was the first Hispanic woman to go to space when on a 9-day mission on the space shuttle discovery. She has logged over 1,000 hours in space and was in mission control for the space shuttle Columbia disaster. In 2013, Ellen became the first Hispanic, and second female, director of the Johnson space center. She has a Barbie doll of her that was released in 2025. She was a flute player at Stanford, winning a soloist award, and she took her flute with her to space in 1993.