The U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame welcomed astronaut inductees Ellen Ochoa and Bob Cabana to its ranks during a May 19 ceremony at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, in Florida.
Ellen Ochoa, the first Hispanic woman to travel to space and current director of the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and Michael Foale, the only U.S. astronaut to serve on both the International Space Station and Russian space station Mir, bring the total number of space explorers honored in the hall of fame to 95.
Bob Cabana, 2008 hall of famer and current director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, presided over the ceremony at Kennedy’s visitor complex to welcome the new inductees.
Ochoa joined NASA in 1988 as a research engineer at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California after earning a doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford University. She joined Johnson in 1990, when she was selected as an astronaut candidate. After completing astronaut training, she served on the nine-day STS-56 mission aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1993, conducting atmospheric studies to better understand the effect of solar activity on Earth’s climate and environment.
Ochoa has flown in space four times, including the STS-66, STS-96 and STS-110 missions, logging nearly 1,000 hours in orbit. She is Johnson’s first Hispanic director and its second female director. She also has served as the center’s deputy director and director of Flight Crew Operations.
