Mexico City. Since Katya Echazarreta was seven years old she wanted to go to space, yesterday – 19 years later – she became the first Mexican to do so. The rocket New Shepard, in which he traveled together with five other crew members, was launched in Texas, United States, for a flight of 10 minutes and five seconds. Before the launch, on social networks, the young woman expressed: “I dedicate this flight to you, Mexico.”
Echazarreta, who also dedicated her trip to the Latin American community, is the youngest woman from the neighboring country to go into space. She is originally from Guadalajara, Jalisco, an electrical engineer, science communicator and has collaborated on five NASA missions.
At 8:25 a.m., the journey that the Tapatia shared with astronaut Evan Dick began; Action Aviation President Hamish Harding; the Brazilian civil production engineer, Víctor Correa Hespanha; Dream Variation Ventures co-founder Jaison Robinson; and Insight Equity co-founder Victor Vescovo.
The mission, the fifth manned, was 10 minutes and 5.53 seconds and the maximum rate of ascent was 3,604 kilometers per hour. An altitude of about 106 kilometers was reached, and the passengers enjoyed a few minutes of weightlessness before descending. The landing of the capsule of the rocket launched by the company Blue Origin, of the American tycoon Jeff Bezos, landed in the desert at 8:35.
On social media, Katya shared a first reaction to her experience: “Space is beautiful and planet Earth is the best view of all!” Afterward, she posted a visibly emotional video in which she thanked Space for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that seeks to expand access to space for all of humanity, and that she was its sponsor. She also expressed her gratitude to her family, her friends and “everyone”. “When she was looking at our planet, all she could think about was you,” she said.
Katya was selected from more than 7 thousand applicants from 100 countries and her participation in this mission was on behalf of women and minorities interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
On her website, the young woman, also a US citizen, shares that her family moved to that country when she was seven years old. She remembers that her mother always encouraged her to follow her passions: space, mathematics, astronomy and physics. Ella Katya is currently pursuing a master’s degree in electrical engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
In a video broadcast hours before its launch, he stated: “I want to dedicate this flight to space to my country and to the entire Latin American community. My wish is that you see this mission, believe in yourself and know that you can be the next one”.
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