Thread by @WIRED

.@FromCaliToMars, one of our #WomenHistoryMonth honorees, has leveraged the experience that comes from being an immigrant to bring a different perspective to aerospace engineering.

Diana Trujillo’s leadership role in STEM is invaluable for the Hispanic community, a source of inspiration for other Latinas that dream of reaching the stars, y un verdadero sí se puede. 2/

Her housekeeping jobs helped her pay her studies in aerospace mechanics and biomechanics, studies that started at the University of Florida and culminated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland. 3/

Trujillo is the first Hispanic immigrant woman admitted to the NASA Academy internship, a multi-disciplinary research program for undergraduate and graduate students in the aerospace field. 4/

At the end of the NASA Academy program, only two of the eighteen participants received job offers from NASA. Trujillo was one of them.

In 2008, Diana Trujillo joined NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on several projects, including Mars Curiosity. 5/

In her roles as Deputy Project System Engineer and Deputy Team Chief of the Engineering, she had to help ensure that the rover met all its scientific objectives while maintaining its health and safety. 6/

But Trujillo’s Mars adventures didn’t stop there. She’s currently a flight director on the Perseverance mission, focusing on the robotic arms tasked with collecting samples on the surface of the red planet. 7/

Diana Trujillo has been instrumental for the Spanish speaking outreach of the space agency. On February 18, she collected yet another first, hosting ‘Juntos Perseveramos,’ NASA's first-ever Spanish language broadcast for a planetary landing.
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Trujillo's contributions have been key to the successful Mars landing of two of NASA’s most sophisticated rovers. And now, young Latinas from all over the world can see themselves achieving their biggest space exploration dreams. 9/