For the past month we have been celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month by spotlighting individuals who have made extraordinary contributions in space science. These include women and men from throughout the United States and the Americas who have not only broken scientific barriers to widen our understanding of the cosmos but have also paved the way for greater inclusivity in a field where all humanity can benefit from the innovation, creativity and wisdom of all people.
Here are some of the amazing people we salute:
is an astrophysicist who has had a storied career in her field. She was the fourteenth director of the National Science Foundation and she served on the Board of Regents for the Smithsonian Institution. Currently, she is on the Board of Trustees at Caltech and is president of the Science Philanthropy Alliance.
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is a theoretical physicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. His research involves black holes and quantum gravity, in particular, loop quantum gravity, which "aims to merge quantum mechanics and general relativity".
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is a particle physicist, data analyst, and science communicator. During her graduate work, she was the first person to use artificial intelligence to identify charged current neutrino interactions in the MicroBooNE detector at Fermilab.
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was an astronomer from Mexico who discovered, independently from fellow astronomer George Herbig, a new type of planetary nebulae now called Herbig-Haro objects. These objects are bright nebulae near newborn stars.
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is an aerospace engineer who was born in the Dominican Republic and joined NASA right out of university. She now works for the Space Telescope Science Institute on the JWST mission as a spacecraft engineer, developing and testing code for one of the telescope's many systems.
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is an astronaut and engineer who flew on the Space Shuttle Atlantis during the STS-61B mission in 1985. He is currently a researcher in the School of Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and voiced the narrator at the Institute of Marine Life in the Latin American dub of the film "Finding Dory".
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is a Colombian planetary geologist who was the first to discover, using satellite images, the cenotes that lead to the mapping of the Chixcalub crater. She has led multiple expeditions to the region to learn about the mass extinction impact event.
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is an astrophysicist who received his undergraduate degree in physics from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and his doctorate from University of Pennsylvania. His work focuses on observational cosmology, gravitational lensing, and designing instrumentation to push the boundary of knowledge in the field.
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is a planetary scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, whose work covers the gamut from physics to geology to astrobiology. They have worked on planets spanning the entire solar system. They are also one of the founders of the Boricua Planeteers, a visibility group for Puerto Rican planetary scientists.
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is the first Cuban astronaut. He is also the first person of African descent to go into space. He launched aboard Soyuz 38, docked at the Salyut 6 space station, and conducted experiments on the potential causes of space adaptation syndrome.
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is a planetary scientist and professor at Northern Arizona University. Her research primarily focuses on telescopic observations of asteroids. She was recently a part of the OSIRIS-REx team and is currently the Observations Working Group Lead for the upcoming DART mission.
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is a Mexican astronomer whose award-winning research has focused on understanding the chemical properties of nebulae and the abundance of primordial hydrogen. She was president of the International Astronomical Union from 2015-2018 and is currently a researcher emeritus at the Institute of Astronomy at UNAM.
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