In a room filled with aspiring rocket scientists and engineers, NASA astronaut Ellen Ochoa upstaged Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
Ochoa, after all, has been to space four times.
Students from the high school portion of the Denver School of Science & Technology wanted to know whether Ochoa was discouraged from becoming an astronaut because she is a woman and whether she had to work harder because she is Latina.
Ochoa was 11 when NASA astronauts landed on the moon. She said she never dreamed then she would go into space — and no one else did, either.
“Nobody would ask a little girl at that point, ‘Do you want to be an astronaut?’ ” said Ochoa, who was selected by NASA five years after she first applied.
Sebelius, former governor of Kansas, told students they have plenty of time to figure out their life plans. When she was in high school, she had never even been to Kansas.
“The notion that I know what I’d be doing now when I was your age couldn’t be farther from the truth,” she said. “Believe in yourself.” Jennifer Brown
