Dorothy Ruíz-Martínez is a Mexican-American

aerospace engineer Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is si ...

who works for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

Biography

She was born in Texas, and was raised by her grandparents in

Matehuala Matehuala is the second most important city in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí. It is located at around , at an elevation of about 1,500 m. Matehuala is also the municipal seat of the municipality of the same name, located in the norther ...

, San Luis Potosí,

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

, until she moved to the United States at age 16. During her childhood, she witnessed the tragedy of the

Space Shuttle Challenger Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' (OV-099) was a Space Shuttle orbiter manufactured by Rockwell International and operated by NASA. Named after the commanding ship of a nineteenth-century scientific expedition that traveled the world, ''Challenge ...

on television; this event fueled her curiosity about

rockets A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely ...

and aerospace engineering.

Education

She went to

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

in the state of Texas, attended the

University of Oklahoma , mottoeng = "For the benefit of the Citizen and the State" , type = Public research university , established = , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.7billion (2021) , pr ...

, and transferred to

Texas A & M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public university, public, Land-grant university, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M Unive ...

College Station, Texas College Station is a city in Brazos County, Texas, Brazos County, Texas, situated in East-Central Texas in the heart of the Brazos Valley, towards the eastern edge of the region known as the Texas Triangle. It is northwest of Houston and east-n ...

, graduating with a B.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering.

NASA

In 1998, she interned via the Langley Aerospace Research Summer Scholars program at

NASA Langley Research Center The Langley Research Center (LaRC or NASA Langley), located in Hampton, Virginia, United States of America, is the oldest of NASA's field centers. It directly borders Langley Air Force Base and the Back River on the Chesapeake Bay. LaRC has fo ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

. After graduating from college, she became an instructor for the GNC & Control Propulsion systems of the Space Shuttle, training flight controllers and astronauts She later worked 12 shuttle missions as a Real-Time Planning Engineer (RPE) contributing along with other engineers and scientist to the final assembly of the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ( ...

. In 2008, she worked in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

and at the Russian Mission Control Center as the planning liaison between NASA and the

Russian Space Agency The State Space Corporation "Roscosmos" (russian: Государственная корпорация по космической деятельности «Роскосмос»), commonly known simply as Roscosmos (russian: Роскосмос) ...

. Since March 2013, she worked as a Ground Controller in Mission Control Center, a flight controller position known by the call sign of Houston-GC. The Houston-GC manages the ground communication systems and interfaces between the space vehicles and the earth. Four years later, she became a GC Instructor, and then the GC Training Lead for the Ground Control group. She currently works in the Mission Control Center Systems branch, helping oversee the management and maintenance of the ground systems that support space flight operations.

Other projects

She volunteered for the

Engineers Without Borders The term Engineers Without Borders (EWB; french: Ingénieurs sans frontières, ISF) is used by a number of non-governmental organizations in various countries to describe their activity based on engineering and oriented to international development ...

, Johnson Space Center Chapter.

Acknowledgments

Her story was included in the book ''Stories for Rebel Girls'' (Editorial Planeta) in 2021.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ruiz Martinez, Dorothy 20th-century births NASA people American aerospace engineers Texas A&M University alumni University of Oklahoma alumni Mexican women engineers Mexican engineers American women engineers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women