Ellen Ochoa

American astronaut

Birthday: May 10, 1958

Birthplace: Los Angeles, California, U.S.

Age: 65 years old

Sign: Taurus

About Ellen Ochoa

Ellen Ochoa is an engineer and retired astronaut. After graduating from her doctoral studies at the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Stanford University School of Engineering in 1985, she worked at the NASA Ames Research Center on optical systems. She was called to be an astronaut with NASA in 1991.

In 1993, she went on her first space mission on the Discovery Space Shuttle to study the ozone layer. She was named the director of the Johnson Space Center in January 2013, after six years of managing the aircraft operations and astronaut office of the center as deputy director. She retired from spacecraft operations in 2007.

Family Life

She was born to Rosanne Deardorff and Joseph Ochoa. The couple divorced when Ellen was a high school student. She has two sons with her intellectual property lawyer husband, Coe Miles.

Achievements

She is the first Hispanic woman in history to go on a space mission. She has been honored with the 2015 “NASA Distinguished Service Medal”, the 1995 “Outstanding Leadership Medal”. She also received the 1993, 1994, 1999 and 2002 “Space Flight Medals”.

Ellen Ochoa photo gallery

Title

NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) deputy director Ellen Ochoa poses for a photo with Robonaut 2 (R2) during media day in the Space Vehicle Mock-up Facility at JSC. R2, who will hitch a ride with the STS-133 crew members, is the first humanoid robot to travel to space and the first U.S.-built robot to visit the International Space Station. R2 will stay on the space station indefinitely to allow engineers on the ground to learn more about how humanoid robots fare in microgravity.

Author

NASA

Source

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ellen_Ochoa_with_Robonaut2.jpg

License

Public domain