Volume 2, No. 3 (Spring 1998) -- Women's History Month Issue

   Ellen Ochoa -- First hispanic woman astronaut

Born in 1958 in California, Ellen Ochoa, NASA astronaut, considers La Mesa to be her hometown. As a doctoral student at Stanford, and later as a researcher at Sandia National Laboratories and NASA Ames Research Center, Dr. Ochoa investigated optical systems for performing information processing. She is co-inventor on three patents for optical inspection systems. As Chief of the Intelligent Systems Technology Branch at Ames, she supervised 35 engineers and scientists in the research and development of computational systems for aerospace missions.

Dr. Ochoa became a NASA astronaut in July of 1991. Her technical assignments to date include flight software verification, flight software and computer hardware development, robotics development, testing, and training, and directing crew involvement in the development and operation of the Space Station. A veteran of two space flights, Dr. Ochoa has logged over 484 hours in space. She currently serves as a spacecraft communicator (CAPCOM) in Mission Control.

During a 9-day mission in 1993, Dr. Ochoa flew as a Mission Specialist with the Discovery crew conducting atmospheric and solar studies in order to better understand the effect of solar activity on the Earth's climate and environment. Dr. Ochoa used the RMS to deploy and capture the Spartan satellite, which studied the solar corona.

Dr. Ochoa was Payload Commander on the ATLAS-3 in 1994, one of a series of Spacelab flights to study the Sun during an 11-year solar cycle, observing how changes in the sun's irradiance affect the Earth's climate and environment. Dr. Ochoa again used the RMS to retrieve the research satellite after its 8-day free flight.