Ellen Ochoa

Dr. Ellen Ochoa, a seasoned astronaut, was the 11th director of Johnson Space Center. She was the first Hispanic director and the second female director. Her previous leadership roles include deputy director of the Center and director of flight crew operations. Ochoa joined NASA in 1988 as a research engineer at Ames Research Center and went to Johnson Space in 1990, selected as an astronaut. She became the first Hispanic woman to go into space when she participated in the nine-day STS-56 mission aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1993. She has flown in space four times, logging nearly 1,000 hours in orbit.