During the month of November, we have been celebrating Native American Heritage Month by spotlighting individuals who have made extraordinary contributions in space and planetary science. We have included people from many different indigenous tribes and nations and from a diverse range of fields, including astrophysics, engineering, and geology. Not only have they contributed to their fields, but they have also worked to forward the acceptance, understanding, and careers of Native Americans.
Here are some of the amazing people we recognize:
is a mechanical engineer for NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory who has worked on the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers as well as the InSight lander. He was honored by the Navajo Nation Council for being inspirational to Diné youth.
Learn more: https://buff.ly/2YufO6p
is an astronomer, artist, and the director of Native Skywatchers, a program created to record, map, and share Indigenous star knowledge. She has published several guidebooks that focus on Ojibwe and D(L)akota constellations.
Learn more: https://buff.ly/3FgcpYD
is an Earth scientist and author whose doctoral thesis involved the study of plankton that cause a toxic red tide in the Gulf of Mexico. Her speculative fiction involves Apache characters and themes, and she is part of the Indigenous Futurisms movement.
Learn more: https://buff.ly/32vKHt3
was a Diné astronomer and a co-founder of Indiana University's First Nations Educational and Cultural Center. He served as chair of the Working Group on Cultural Astronomy and Storytelling for the American Astronomical Society during the International Year of Astronomy in 2009.
“It was this magnificent beauty of the Universe that drew me in and to understand some part of it would be to understand the Diyin Diné (Holy People). So astronomy is a spiritual path for me.”
Learn more: https://buff.ly/3l5wo4L
is an award-winning hydrologist who specializes in understanding the environmental contamination in the Navajo Nation, particularly due to mining. She is also a faculty member at the University of Arizona, where she studies the effects of wildfire and climate change on water resources.
Learn more: https://buff.ly/3l99md8
is a science communicator in Manitoba, Canada, and a member of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation. He teaches First Nations students about the night sky using a pair of portable planetarium domes and is the author of Tipiskawi Kisik: Night Sky Star Stories.
Learn more: https://buff.ly/2PFojDB
is an environmental scientist and is Huichol and Pascua Yaqui. Her research focuses on soil health, Indigenous science, and environmental data, particularly owned by tribal nations. She is now a postdoc researcher at the University of Arizona.
Learn more: https://buff.ly/3I0Bvgq
was a biologist who worked on the Manhattan Project as a hematology technician. After World War II, she went on to get her doctorate from the University of Chicago. She went on to work for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and again for Los Alamos National Laboratory before her retirement.
Learn more: https://www.manhattanprojectvoices.org/people/floy-agnes-lee
was a nuclear physicist whose parents were Navajo healers. He was trained to be a farmer, but several years after returning from the Korean War, he enrolled at University of New Mexico. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees and finished his doctorate in 1971, and he worked in lasers for Los Alamos National Laboratory for 30 years.
Learn more: https://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2005/na/bio_fred.htm
is physicist and member of the Cherokee Nation who worked on the Gemini and Apollo programs at NASA. He is also one of the co-founders of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, which supports Native Americans in science. He most recently founded and runs High Eagle Technologies, focusing on cancer research.
Learn more: https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/44901
is a retired U.S. Navy pilot and NASA astronaut who was born in the Chickasaw Nation and was the first enrolled member of any Native American tribe to go to space. He was a Mission Specialist for the STS-113 flight, which delivered the P1 Truss segment to the International Space Station. He was also the commander of the NEEMO 6 mission where he lived and worked underwater for ten days.
Learn more: https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=HE024
is a geologist and paleoclimatologist who studies speleothems, cave formations such as stalagmites and stalagtites, to reconstruct past climate changes. She is also an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine, where she served as the Principal Investigator and director of the American Indian Summer Institute in Earth System Science.
Learn more: https://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=5444
was the first female engineer at Lockheed where she was one of the founding members of the "Skunk Works" Advanced Development Programs. She worked for Lockheed her entire career, retiring in in 1973. One of her best known projects is the Agena rocket, and she worked on several preliminary designs for missions to Venus and Mars.
Learn more: https://www.nps.gov/people/mary-g-ross.htm
is a NASA engineer and member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. Since working as a high school intern, she has now been employed at four different NASA facilities and has worked on Cassini-Huygens, Parker Solar Probe, and Europa Clipper spacecraft.
Learn more: https://nacc.stanford.edu/50-50-dr-powtawche-valerino
is an atmospheric scientist who specializes in studying and understanding hurricanes. She was the first permanent director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Program.
Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/bios/hood_bio.html
is an astrophysicist specializing in high-energy physics and an environmentalist who co-founded the Fallbrook Land Conservancy in San Diego. He's also an award-winning playwright whose plays reflect his Native American heritage as a member of the Choctaw Nation.
Learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Hampton_Tucker
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