A hallmark of the Latino community is to help one another, if students are interested in a way to give back and help their communities, becoming a teacher is probably one of the very best ways of doing that.

I was born in 1958, the same year NASA was established, which I like to think of as not a coincidence. I was 11 when they landed on the moon, Apollo Eleven. And, of course, everybody in the whole world was watching that. But I can tell you, at that time, nobody ever asked a girl, 'Is that something you want to grow up and do?'

It's fun to work the robotic arm in part because it's really a team effort.

We are constantly emphasizing to people that they need to address anything that affects flight safety or mission success, many pathways to do that, and we need to understand better what might be preventing people from using those pathways.

Don't be afraid to reach for the stars

I think of it as a good opportunity to let, in particular, school kids know that this job and other interesting jobs in science and engineering are open to anyone who works hard in school and gets a good education and studies math and science. And that it's not just for a select group of people.

We are involved in technology development for, you know, missions that we hope to plan that would take us to an asteroid and eventually to Mars.