By Pamela Cruz and Constanza Mazzotti
I still remember my volunteer days in a small town in the mountains of Hidalgo, Mexico. One of those where electricity does not reach all the houses, because over time they have been forgotten. However, it is where my eyes were filled with the most light in my entire life. I looked forward to every night, as I raised my hand and felt it was possible to reach for the stars.
I used to take a backpack out to the patio and stay there for hours, sometimes all night, imagining what it would be like to be up there, in space, seeing the earth from that place, feeling tiny before the immensity of the universe, realizing that this ball we call earth is beautiful, but nothing before the infinite space.
As a child I dreamed of being an astronaut, but, I thought, is that real? When could a Mexican woman ever achieve such fortune? It's a career for men, an uncle once told me, while a professor laughed at my dreams.
On June 4, 2022, Katya Echazarreta, a 26-year-old from Jalisco who has lived in Texas since she was 7 years old, achieved the dream of millions of girls who do nothing more than set their eyes on the stars. She became one of the six space tourists transported by Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft, proving that there is room in the universe for all those who strive to reach it.
The ten-minute trip marked the fifth successful manned mission for Jeff Bezos' company, but the feat of a lifetime for Echazarreta.
Katya became not only the first Mexican woman to travel into space, but also the youngest American to cross the borders of Earth.
The young electrical engineer is also a science communicator for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA. She has worked on five NASA missions, including the Europa Clipper.
Her goal, she says, is that her "journey as a woman in STEM - an acronym for the academic disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics - will help others achieve their goals. I am proud of my Mexican roots and want to show others that you can have a successful career without sacrificing what makes you perfectly unique," she says on her blog. www.katechazarreta.com.
The engineer was one of the seven thousand applicants to be part of "Space for Humanity", a program that seeks to democratize access to space.
The trip was joined by space tourists Victor Correa Hespanha - the second Brazilian to go into space - as well as entrepreneurs Hamish Harding, Jaison Robinson, Victor Vescovo and Evan Dick.
While Katya had her seat belts fastened and started the countdown for the ship to take her where only her best dreams had taken her, in my head I couldn't stop listening to "Space Oddity" in the background.
"Ground Control to Major Tom, Ground Control to Major Tom, take your protein pills and put your helmet on. Ground Control to Major Tom, commencing countdown, engines on, check ignition and may God's love be with you. Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Lift off", sang David Bowie in 1969.
NASA women look to the sky
I was walking through the center of my hometown alone in the early morning on a stroll to take off the heat. The yellow lights on the white concrete illuminated the streets giving a sense of security and if that was not enough light, there was a full moon.
I went up and down stairs, took big and small streets and looked out before continuing on to my house. There he was, in the middle of the concrete slab, an unknown gentleman, concentrated, watching motionless through a tiny telescope peephole, who invited me to look through the telescope at that huge ball in the sky and I, without saying a word, accepted with a friendly naturalness to see the moon up close.
The telescope set up by that unknown gentleman in the middle of a central and empty street at dawn reminded me of the desire I had as a child for the planets. A dream encouraged by my grandfather when, as a child, he gave me and taught me to use my own telescope.
The first times I approached a peephole to see the stars, I wondered who would be the person to get there. It was in 1993 at the age of nine, when a woman was already there.
Ellen Ochoa, the Stanford physicist and engineering Ph.D. who had a 30-year career at NASA, flew her first space mission, STS-56 from Kennedy Space Center, on April 8, 1993 on the space shuttle Discovery during a nine-day voyage.
In total, the astronaut has flown into space a total of four times, accumulating a thousand hours of work as a leader aboard the spacecraft.
Ochoa is the first woman of Hispanic origin born in Los Angeles, California, to reach space, and had a career that would open the first spaces at NASA so that girls and people of color could dedicate themselves to the study of science, as she also dedicated herself to participate in campaigns that would open such spaces.
Perhaps Ochoa was the watershed that has made it possible for many Mexican women who have dreamed of the sky and space to get there.
Such is the case of the generation of Mexican women who have managed to enter NASA, performing their scientific work, not only in space but also on the ground, and also on missions to the planet Mars.
Margaret Zoila, a native of Tecamachalco, Puebla, currently holds a PhD in optical sciences from the University of Arizona and is an optical engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
Her job is to work on the Roman telescope, named after Nancy Grace Roman, who was the first female executive at NASA or the "mother of Hubble". Dr. Margaret Zoila works on the instrument, which is designed to study galaxies and help understand dark energy and dark matter.
Dorothy Ruiz Martinez, a native of San Luis Potosi, is an aerospace engineer from the University of Texas, working at NASA's Control Houston mission controlling ground-based communication systems linking satellite telecommunications with the International Space Station.
Her career began in 1998 when she was selected by the agency to conduct research for high-speed space vehicles with reusable materials, being appointed as a Shuttle Astronaut instructor. She has worked in Moscow, Russia, as Liaison Coordinator of space activities between NASA and the Russian Space Agency.
Javiera Cervini Silva, Ph.D., an environmental chemist from the University of Illinois and currently a professor and researcher in the Department of Processes and Technology at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, was also a researcher at the Center for Integrative Planetary Science and deputy director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute (BioMARS Program) at the University of California at Berkeley (2003-2005).
The team, of which Dr. Cervini was a member, studied the possibility of life on Mars, the evolution of the hydrosphere, the surface topography on Mars and its relationship to the history of water distribution and atmospheric processes.
The achievements of women to reach space do not end there because now, the paths are heading towards the planet Mars. Carmen Felix, 37, who in 2016 became the first Mexican analog astronaut, has participated in a simulation by NASA at the Mars Desert Reseasch Station in Utah.
In addition, he has done work such as collaborative programs between Mexico and NASA, which helps Mexicans to do internships and summer programs. In addition, he has worked with the advisory council of the UN space generation.
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