Ellen Ochoa: Astronaut

Shortly before Ellen Ochoa was scheduled to make her first flight into space in 1993, she was asked at a news conference what she was most afraid of as a rookie astronaut on the upcoming nine-day mission. “I’m most afraid,” she said, “of being in a car accident sometime in the next 10 days and not getting to go.” After training three years for the mission, Ochoa was determined to not miss the most important moment of her life. But it wasn’t until she returned to earth, that she realized how big a star she had become to women of color aspiring to be like her.

When the space shuttle Discovery lifted off on April 8, 1993 with Ochoa as a mission specialist, it had only been a decade since she had been a 25-year old graduate student at Stanford University, on track to becoming an electrical engineer. That year, 1983, was the first time that an American woman astronaut was on a flight into space.

When Sally Ride took off on the Challenger it transformed the entire space program and she became an instant role model to millions of young women, including Ochoa. Despite a seven-year age difference between them, Ochoa was struck by the many similarities in their lives beginning with the fact that they were both Southern Californians who had grown up less than two hours from each other.

In an interview with CNBC in 2021, she recalled, “That was a huge milestone: the first American woman in space. She had been a physics major, like I had. She had gone to Stanford, where I was getting my Ph.D. Then, two years after that, the first astronaut of Hispanic heritage, Franklin Chang Diaz, flew.  A lot of things were changing. Certainly, the space world was changing.”

When Ellen Ochoa was born on May 10, 1958, there was no American space program. And even two months later, when then President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill creating NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the idea of being an astronaut wasn’t anything that adults or kids could understand enough to aspire to be one.

Joseph and Rosanne Ochoa had five children and Ellen, their middle child, was born in Los Angeles. Joseph was a Navy veteran and the family eventually settled in La Mesa, a suburb of San Diego right over the border from Mexico. Ochoa’s paternal grandparents had emigrated from Sonora, Mexico a generation earlier. Neither of her parents had gone to college, but they stressed education as a way to a better life. As the kids were growing up, Rosanne set an example by taking college classes, one at a time, until she was able to get her degree 22 years later.

In high school, Ochoa was a top student and she got a scholarship to Stanford University in Palo Alto. By then her parents were divorced and Ochoa wanted to stay closer to home to help her mother, so she turned down the opportunity, enrolling at San Diego State instead.

From the time she was ten when she learned to play the flute, music became such a big part of Ochoa’s life that for a time she thought of pursuing a career as a professional flutist. Her talent for music competed with her love for science and math, even though her interest in STEM subjects was often dismissed by professors because she was female. At San Diego State, she remembers one male electrical engineering teacher saying to her, “Well, we did have a woman come through here once, but it’s really a difficult course of study and I just don’t know if you’d be interested.” Because Ochoa found more encouragement from physics professors, she ultimately chose physics as her college major.

Stanford, however, didn’t give up pursuing her and in 1980, as Ochoa was finishing up her undergraduate degree, they offered her a graduate fellowship in electrical engineering. The next ten years were an exciting period. She thrived on doing research in the field of optics and from her doctorate dissertation, she received three patents related to optical computer applications.   Her expertise in this field led to a job at the Sandia National Laboratory in Livermore where she applied her knowledge to research being done on nuclear weapons.

By 1985, having earned her both her master’s and doctorate degrees and inspired by Ride and Diaz, Ochoa decided to apply to NASA’s Training Program as an astronaut candidate. Even though the space program had expanded beyond accepting only pilots and military veterans, Ochoa didn’t expect to be accepted. When she wasn’t, she decided to take flying lessons to strengthen her chances the next time.

Her next job also elevated her resume. In 1986, she joined NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley where she ultimately became chief of Intelligent Systems Technology, leading 35 scientists in developing computer systems for future space flights.

The following year, when the space agency was selecting its next class of astronauts, she was flown to the Johnson Space Center for a week of interviews.  She wasn’t chosen again, but she felt she was getting closer to her dream of becoming an astronaut.

It would a few more years, but in 1990 she was accepted into the astronaut program. Three years of intense training followed before she was able to climb on board the shuttle for her history making flight.

Ochoa made three more trips into space between 1984-2000, logging nearly 1000 miles and 40 days in space. On her first voyage, she collected data as part of the mission’s study of the sun and its impact on the earth’s ozone layer and climate. She was also in charge of the shuttle’s robotic arm, where she had to deploy and retrieve a satellite. Between her official responsibilities she was able to play the flute on the mission, which was recorded live and beamed down to earth.

On her next mission in 1994 on the Atlantis shuttle, she was payload commander. On the1999 mission, when Discovery became the first shuttle to dock with the International Space Station, Ochoa operated the vehicle’s robotic arm, moving thousands of pounds of food, water, equipment and supplies to restock MIR. Ochoa’s fourth and final trip to space on board Discovery in 2002 required her to attach solar panels to the space station.

Ochoa spent another eleven years at NASA in various management roles. In 2013 she became director of the Johnson Space Center, only the second woman in that role and first director of Hispanic background.  She retired in 2018 and continues to advocate for diversity and women in science as well as play the flute.