The_Brave_One

The Brave One Born May 10, 1958, in Los Angeles, California, Ellen Ochoa became the first fe-male Hispanic astronaut in 1990. Ellen Ochoa first dreamed of taking part in a space flight during her graduate-school days, when several of her fellow students applied to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut-training program. While they did not make the final cut, she persevered throughout the lengthy and difficult selection process and finally achieved her goal in 1990, making her the first female His-panic astronaut in NASA history. Since then, Ochoa has spent hundreds of hours in space as a member of three different shuttle crews performing vital research and taking part in historic firsts. Such high-profile success has made her a role model for students across the nation, an assignment Ochoa has accepted with pride and enthusiasm. Although she was born in Los Angeles, California, Ellen Ochoa has always re-garded the suburban San Diego community of La Mesa as her hometown. She, her sister, and three brothers grew up in a single-parent household headed by her mother, Rosanne; her father left the family when Ellen was in junior high school. Rosanne Ochoa was a firm believer in the value of education and the ochoa, three, space, ellen, while, school, performing, optical, nasa, first, california, university, top, took, taking, students, stanford, san, rosanne, research, part, national, method, los, high, headed, family, earned, during, diego, degree, became, astronaut, angeles, 1990