From the Voces Oral History Center:
Ellen Lauri Ochoa was born and raised in California in 1958. Growing up, her interests revolved around math and music. She played the flute since she was 10 years old.
Ochoa graduated at the top of her high school class and attended San Diego State University, where she considered majoring in music or in something math-related.
In an interview with The Preamble podcast, Ochoa said she was initially steered away from engineering.
“So I went to talk to a couple of professors,” Ochoa said. “One was a professor in engineering, electrical engineering, and he was like, ‘we had a woman come through here once but its a really difficult course of study, I don’t think you’d be interested.’ Which of course was ironic because I showed up specifically because I thought I might be interested. But then I got a very different reception from the physics professor I talked to.”
After switching majors several times, Ochoa ultimately studied physics. She then completed a masters and Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford University.
Ochoa told NPR’s Tell Me More Podcast that Sally Ride, the first U.S. woman in space, inspired her.
“When I was in college, actually, is when they picked the first class of shuttle astronauts. And that was really a milestone,” Ochoa said. “It was the first class that had women and minority astronauts. And it really made an impression on me that this was a career that was now open to women.”
Ochoa was interested in research, but she wanted in on NASA’s team. She began applying to become an astronaut in 1985. She was rejected twice, but she positioned herself by working as a researcher at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. She also got a pilot’s license.
In 1990, she was accepted into NASA’s astronaut candidate class. She moved to Houston to study and train for space travel.
In 1993, Ochoa became the first Latina to go into space as a crew member of the Shuttle Discovery.
In space, Ochoa operated a robotic arm to collect data from a satellite — making it possible to study the sun’s energy and the Earth’s atmosphere.
She would go to space four times in her lifetime, spending over 980 hours in space. Ochoa also brought the first flute to space and often played when she had free time.
In 2013, Ochoa was appointed director of NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston — the first person of Latino heritage in the position.