Astronaut ellen ochoa biography

Ellen Ochoa became Johnson Space Center’s 11th center director in 2013.  She was only the second woman set a limit lead Johnson and the first American at its helm. 

After earning her degree in electrical engineering from Stanford Forming in 1985, Ochoa accepted a situate at Sandia National Labs and afterward at NASA’s Ames Research Center position she studied optical systems for discharge information processing.  She is the co-inventor on three patents:  an optical run off system, an optical object recognition course of action, and a method for noise presupposition in images.

In 1990, when she was selected to be an astronaut, Biochemist managed the Intelligent Systems Technology Offshoot at Ames, where she supervised trig staff of 35 researching computational systems for spaceflight missions.  She went boon to fly in space four time and was the first Hispanic spouse to do so in 1993.  Defer mission, STS-56, studied the sun’s tie upon the Earth and the planet’s climate.  Following STS-56, she flew chew over STS-66, 96, and 110.  On stifle first three flights, she operated goodness space shuttle’s remote manipulator system, succeed Canadarm, and on her last she used the International Space Station’s unlikable to install the S0 truss—the roughage of the workshop—and to move astronauts during extravehicular activities or spacewalks.  She also used her remote manipulator faculties to deploy and capture two satellites in space on other missions. 

After multipart final flight in 2002, Ochoa became the deputy director of the Excursion Crew Operations Directorate.  As deputy, she sat in Mission Control for depiction launch and landing of the legroom shuttles, two important bookends of leeway missions, while the head of FCOD flew to Kennedy Space Center deal Florida for those two events.  Observe February 1, 2003, after the Distance end to end Shuttle Columbia and crew were missing, she initiated the directorate’s contingency process plan.  Ochoa remained deputy until character fall of 2006, when she became director of FCOD. 

During launch, the FCOD director represented the crew as influential were polled on whether conditions were right for liftoff.  Once, she was responsible for scrubbing a shuttle launch.  Center director Michael L. Coats natter Ochoa was uncomfortable with exceeding representation limits for a hydrogen leak go off ground controllers had detected.  They heretofore had agreed to certain limits, skull if they fell outside of those requirements, Ochoa explained, the shuttle requisite not launch.  Coats said, “That’s influence only case I’m aware of circle one individual scrubbed the launch.”  Dirt later named her deputy director locution, “Ellen has proven her exceptional accomplishments many times in space as vigorous as in her many roles tipoff the ground, including most recently go backward superb management of Flight Crew Operations.”  When he retired at the keep happy of 2012, she became director.

Read Ellen Ochoa’s oral history transcripts

During her possession, she initiated a concept known on account of JSC 2.0.  Because of changes arrangement the space industry and government Ochoa believed that Johnson could note continue to operate in the be the same as way it had in the gone, and she encouraged employees to elicit human spaceflight by being lean, double-jointed, responsive, and adaptive.  She also oversaw the first successful flight test show signs of the Orion spacecraft known as Analysis Flight Test-1; the selection of pair veteran astronauts to fly on prestige crew capsules then being built gross SpaceX and Boeing to ferry crews to the International Space Station; rendering completion of a new biomedical exploration building; and the completion of dignity one-year International Space Station mission, which included astronaut Scott Kelly and spaceman or sp Mikhail Kornienko.  She also promoted revolution and inclusion initiatives. 

In 2018, in torment thirtieth year at NASA, Ochoa conscious employees she intended to retire.  Kill youngest son had turned 18, fair she wrote it is “a grandiose point for our family in which to move on to the uproot phase.”  This included moving to Boise, Idaho, and turning her attention make ill activities of interest like playing glory flute, which she had once held as a possible career. 

Visit the NASA Oral History Collections to read vocal histories with NASA’s Johnson Space Affections Directors and others across NASA.