“Do I want to go back to space? Yes, but not as much as the plans I have for us, so that Mexico finally has the opportunity to go into space,” he said. Katya Echazarreta.
The first Mexican to travel to outer space as part of the Citizen Astronaut Program of Space for Humanity, a non-profit organization that seeks to expand access to space for all humanity, participated in Pitch in the Sky, an entrepreneurship event and investment held from December 9 to 11. In it she dictated the conference life after spacewhere he told his life story and advanced the plans he has for what he called the future of Mexico.
The electrical engineer by profession said that in three months she will officially launch the Echazarreta Space Station. This is a mission led by Mexican and Latino specialists, technology and design, which seeks to generate more Mexican astronauts. “Not just one here and one there, but a whole group of all of us working together to build the future,” the young woman told some 100 businessmen and investors gathered at Club 51 in Torre Mayor in Mexico City.
“We wanted to give you a little preview of everything we have been working on tirelessly in recent months,” Katya said, after recounting how she became the first Mexican to leave the beautiful blue sphere, in June 2022.
Create your own opportunities
“The first Mexican woman to go into space. They are words that are very beautiful to pronounce and it has been my dream since I was seven years old. The reality is that getting here was not pretty, nor easy. It has really cost me a lot of gray hair at 27 years old,” said Katya.
Born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, the young woman moved to the United States at the age of eight and 10 years later, she lived through her parents’ divorce. At 18, she was forced to become the second breadwinner for her family.
“I had really big dreams, I wanted to be an engineer, I wanted to be an astronaut, to go out there and change NASA and change the space industry, but at the same time, I had to take care of my family, so I decided I was going to stay,” he recalled.
Echazarreta He worked at McDonald’s, walked dogs and tutored for the math department while his mom cleaned or babysitted. She later was able to attend the public university that she paid for herself.
Get ahead of the facts
Before graduating as an Electrical Engineer from UCLA in 2019, she landed her first internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she landed a full-time job as an engineer six months before graduation. A year later, she was already the test leader of the Europa Clipper mission, a telescope in space.
“I always knew, no one was going to come up to me and say, ‘you know what? I know you’re only 22 and a new engineer, but here’s this big NASA project you have to lead.’ What was I supposed to do? Make it happen myself, just like I’ve done all my life. In 2015 I decided that I wanted to be an astronaut and so what I did was change my lifestyle, to that of an astronaut so that I could enter it naturally, ”she recalled.
In this way, the young woman changed her diet, her way of exercising and taking care of her body. “I made sure to research my family’s health history. And I focused on all those different things to make sure that she was going to be a perfect fit when the time came…I wasn’t going to wait until she was 35 or 40 years old. I’m going to start training now,” she recounted.
Since 2019 Katya trained in microgravity, hyperbaric chamber, among others, three years before her first application for the space mission, for which she was a finalist with five other people, among 7,000 more who applied worldwide.
A transformational journey
From the beginning, astronaut missions have focused on science and exploration. But one of his most profound discoveries is the cognitive change that astronauts experience when looking at Earth from space.
Returnees enter politics to seek social change, become activists or humanitarian leaders. Hence the raison d’être of the Citizen Astronaut Program of Space for Humanity.
This organization decided that Katya’s mission of helping women enter STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) careers and driving technology development was the right thing to do. strong enough for this mission. So she selected it.
They sent me on this mission, not to go into space, but to come back and change the world.
Katya Echazarreta
“When I was looking at our planet I realized all the things we had done well. And this perspective is the greatest privilege that life could give you; You really feel unstoppable and that you can go back and do what you want and change what you want,” recalled the astronaut.
Upon her return, Echazarreta saw the faces of girls who told their parents “I want to be like her and I want to go to space.” This hadn’t happened since 1985, when Mexican scientist Rodolfo Neri Vela flew aboard a NASA space shuttle mission.
The astronaut recounted that it was very difficult to see the children excited to want to go to space and become astronauts, develop space technology and that the conditions to achieve it do not exist in the country.
“So I decided that if it doesn’t exist, I will. The opportunities are not there, but I will make everyone believe them: a single agency capable of sending Mexican and Latin American astronauts into space. This is how my true dream was born ”he admits.
All this time, since I was a little girl, I thought that my goal was to go to space, that my dream is to go to space. After I got there, I realized that’s not really the goal. It’s not enough that he did. It’s not enough that I can live and see it if my community can’t live and see it too.
Katya Echazarreta
Thus arose the Echazarreta Space Station plan, the project in progress that will make it possible to see more Mexicans and Latin Americans in space.
Marisol Garcia Fuentes Editorial Director Emprende and Emprendedor.com. I am motivated by stories of tenacity and innovation.