Adriana Ocampo said she grew up playing an astronaut instead of with dolls. And throughout all of her moves from her native Colombia to Argentina and finally the U.S., she worked towards the goal she had to work with NASA.
Since 1988 she’s been at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. and answers letters from little girls in both English and Spanish. This is part of her work to mentor Latinas and girls in science, formalized in a group she works with called Latina Women of NASA.
The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Information Programs had a very interesting profile on her, here’s a snippet:
…Ocampo said her parents told her and her three sisters that, in life, education is the most important thing. But when she tried to enroll in a public science secondary school in Argentina, administrators turned her away, explaining that the school was only for boys. When her family moved to the United States at the end of 1969, when she was 14 years old, she knew it was the right time to pursue her dreams. Yet, knowing no English, she had to start ”from the ground up,” pursuing her dream as a secondary-school-aged student assigned to middle school until she learned English…
Ocampo moved to NASA headquarters in Washington in 1998 and has been responsible for the exploratory Juno mission to Jupiter launched in 2011, the New Horizons mission to Pluto launched in 2006 and expected to reach the planet in 2015, and the Osiris-Rex mission that will launch in 2016 to collect asteroid samples. In addition, Ocampo is lead scientist for the European Space Agency’s Venus Express mission, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Venus Climate Orbiter, and NASA’s Venus exploration group…
[Screenshot Via IIP]
Sara Inés Calderón is a journalist and writer who lives between Texas and California. Follow her on Twitter @SaraChicaD.
