Woman came to the US with just $300 and is now NASA's Flight Director for the Mars Rover
“Perseverance” carried our aspirations to reach the Final Frontier.
Last 2020, NASA launched a rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Almost a year after, a capsule opened over the Martian landscape and carefully deposited a Mars Rover Perseverance.
It was a culmination of the work of various scientific geniuses, from the Jet Propulsion Lab to the aerospace engineering labs. But for one person, it was the culmination of the rover’s namesake – her perseverance.
Diana Trujillo was just 17 years old when she ran away from home.
Her parents were divorced and her future held nothing but dead ends. It didn’t help that many people in her family didn’t believe that women won’t amount to much.
Trujillo then did what she thought was the best choice for her – immigrate to the United States with $300 in her pocket.
“I was born and raised in Colombia,” she said, as quoted by PEOPLE “There was a lot of violence going on in my country, so for me, looking up at the sky and looking at the stars was my safe place.”
From Cali, Colombia, she found herself in Miami.
She literally had to start from nothing but a start, just by itself, is worth more than anything. She put herself through community college and worked odd jobs to make ends meet.
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For Trujillo, everything was an opportunity. It was a tough life and she admitted that a mindset of gratitude helped her through the most challenging times.
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“I didn’t see it as, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this job at night,’” she said as quoted by PEOPLE, “It was just more like, ‘I’m glad that I have a job and I can buy food and have a house to sleep.’”
Then, as she was deciding on her future, she saw a magazine cover that would change her life forever.
She was in line to declare her major at the University of Florida. She was still undecided by then until she saw a magazine featuring female astronauts.
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It was a field that she would help trailblaze. When she picked aerospace engineering, she chose to be the torchbearer for Latinas and females in STEM.
She became the first immigrant Hispanic woman to join the NASA Academy.
She eventually became part of the organization in 2009 where she became a telecom systems engineer for Perserverance’s ancestor – Mars Curiosity.
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Then, from a housekeeper struggling to make ends meet, she led that team that placed Perseverance on the red planet.
For Trujillo, the honor is not just for her, but for the millions of women who wanted to reach for the stars.
Last October 2021, Trujillo and two other Latina engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were awarded the STEM Awards from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation.
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“The abuelas, the moms or dads, the uncles, los primos, like everyone has to see this,” she told CBS News. “And they have to see a woman in there, too. So that they can turn around to the younger generation and say, ‘She can do it, you can do it.'”
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Perseverance has made it beyond our horizons because of the same thing that it was named from – they can’t say that rocket science isn’t poetic.
Watch how a migrant with just $300 dollars launched a rover into Mars.
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Source: YouTube – The Drew Barrymore Show, NASA, CBS, PEOPLE, Instagram – @fromcalitomar