47 Quotes by Ellen Ochoa

Education is what allows you to stand out.

What everyone in the astronaut corps shares in common is not gender or ethnic background, but motivation, perseverance, and desire – the desire to participate in a voyage of discovery.

Usually, girls weren’t encouraged to go to college and major in math and science. My high school calculus teacher, Ms. Paz Jensen, made math appealing and motivated me to continue studying it in college.

Well, with so many space shuttle missions that we’ve done, I think it’s just sort of natural that each one hasn’t necessarily gotten the attention that the early ones did.

That’s what we want to do here at Johnson Space Center. I think what we have always brought to NASA and brought to the country is trying to push the boundaries, trying to go to the next level.

Astronauts are very professional and when they’re preparing for launch, they prepare for it as the most serious endeavor of our lives.

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.

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. We need to understand better what may be preventing people from using those pathways.