Lady Diana Trujillo Pomerantz became the most-searched personality on Google, even surpassing Colombia’s president, Iván Duque, after participating in the mission that brought the ‘Perseverance’ rover to the planet Mars last Thursday.
The Cali-born aerospace engineer, who became the first Hispanic woman to be admitted to NASA Space Academy in 2007, was in charge this time – in addition to participating in the design of the robotic arm and two explorer instruments named Pixl and Sherloc – to introduce the world to the arrival of the robot on Mars, in the first live broadcast in Spanish of a NASA space mission.
Considered the most advanced vehicle sent into space to date, the discovery vehicle weighs about a ton, measures about 3 meters long and 2.7 wide, has more than 30 cameras, an atmosphere analyzer to see the ability to detect oxygen. extract, a robotic arm and a small 2-kilo helicopter that will fly over the thin atmosphere of Mars, which will be on the planet for about a Mars year, 687 days on Earth.
“The purpose of the ‘Perseverance’ mission is to find out if there was ever life on the surface of Mars. We arrive at a place called Jezero crater. In that crater we are going to do research because there is clay that could tell us if there was water … If we find that, we are also going to do research to find out if life probably started on Mars and on Earth at the the same time. So we have a really interesting question to answer, ”said Diana during an interview with CNN.
The ‘Perseverance’ was launched on July 30, 2020 and it took seven months to reach the red planet, under the ‘Mars Rover Perseverance’ mission, one of the most important in the exploration of the planet.
She says her passion for astronomy was born when she lived in Colombia, “In the 1980s, a time of great violence in my country, I would spend that time looking at the sky to give me peace of mind. I’ve always wondered how stars and planets could co-exist without chaos, and that’s how it all started for me. “
Also read: Robot Perseverance sends more images of Mars
De Caleña, whose father is an accountant and lives in Colombia, lives with her mother in the United States. He came to that country when he was 17 years old, without speaking English and eventually looking for a way to learn the language and thus begin his university studies.
With only $ 300 in her pocket and intent on helping her mother with the household finances, Diana began working as a housekeeper and paid for her English lessons at Miami Dade College. But she got so bored with the same thing that she sneaked into the math classes: ‘I was tired of learning English and I sat down to answer all the math questions they had because I didn’t have to speak any language, the numbers everywhere. The world is the same and then I realized what I liked, ”she explains.
Aerospace engineer Diana Trujillo has been married to William Pomerantz since 2009 and they have two children.
Especially for El País
He eventually landed four jobs, assignments that enabled him to begin studying space science and eventually aerospace engineering at the University of Florida.
This is how she was encouraged to apply to NASA academy, where she became one of only two people in her cohort who were employed. There he attended the University of Maryland, where he helped Professor Brian Roberts research how robots would operate in space. And she graduated in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland. Her story was turned into a science children’s book by Kari Cornell and Fatima Khan.
“I knew NASA was the only place I could do what I wanted to do, I wanted to discover, I wasn’t looking for any kind of recognition, but rather learning,” he says.
“ After I graduated I worked with a program to transport cargo to the space station, then ‘Curiosity’ and now Mars 2020, and sometimes I don’t believe it when I start thinking I had nothing and the language, ” said at the time against El País, de Caleña, who graduated from Colegio Cañaverales.
She believes you don’t have to be a genius or have five graduate degrees to work at NASA, just ‘you want, you want, you want to do it, but you don’t win for two or three months, you win for five years . “
And he adds, “And understand that every time a door opens, you walk, you walk. The more difficult the situation, the more you want. What you need is the will and that survival pod that you have in your heart ”.
Diana says she doesn’t want to miss that moment when she finds life on Mars, but there are many projects she has in progress: “I want to see if I can work with astronauts, go to Mars and the moon, and keep working. in the organization I am with ”.
Together with her husband William Pomerantz, an American scientist who launches rockets into space, Diana also leads the Brooke Owen Fellowship Foundation, which helps female graduates, particularly Latinas and other minorities, and provides opportunities in the aerospace industry.
Diana Trujillo was the first Spanish migrant to the Space Academy. Initially, he worked in the field of NASA dedicated to building unmanned spacecraft.
Photo taken from Twitter
Descent on Mars
The descent to Mars of the mission ‘Mars Rover Perseverance’ is one of the most important in the exploration of the red planet. “I think what we’re going to discover with this mission could be a problem understanding or solving the climate problem and how to care for the Earth,” de Caleña told the BBC.
“When we realize that we are not alone in the universe, forget it, it’s like when you realize that the car wasn’t from someone, that it was borrowed and you go, wash it and clean it. You’re going to have to reevaluate and have that introspective and say, ‘Oh my god, if I’m not the only one, then I should do better.’ And my analogy of the car is exactly the planet Earth, if you realize that you are not alone, that the car was not yours, you should take better care of it, ‘he added.
According to astronomy expert Germán Puerta, “this mission is a historic event for humanity because it aims to test whether there is life on that planet or not and to prepare the manned missions that will descend there, that is, the first humans in Mars. It is a milestone greater than the first humans’ descent to the moon over 50 years ago ”.
For his part, the coordinator of the Bogotá Planetarium, Carlos Augusto Molina, confirms that “Mars is an interesting target because it tells very well some moments of the formation of the solar system. The ‘Perseverance’ wants to study the properties of the soil of Mars, its humidity, its atmosphere and try to draw the biological profile of a planet like Mars ”.
The ‘Perseverance’ was launched on July 30 last year and it took 7 months to reach the red planet. “The descent was extremely dangerous, so dangerous that about half of the missions sent to Mars fail or are lost,” explains Puerta, adding that “scientists call the descent to Mars the 7 minutes of terror because they missions enter the atmosphere and atmospheric friction begins to heat up the protective shield, all communication with the control room is lost and the mission must automatically maneuver to brake from 20 thousand kilometers per hour to a smooth descent on the surface, a real achievement. meant having parachutes, retro missiles and surface analysis technological designs ”.
Exactly, the Perseverance descended to the surface of Mars supported by a ‘celestial crane’, for this reason it survived the so-called ‘seven minutes of terror’, the period of entry and descent into the atmosphere of Mars in which the temperature and risk were maxima.
If this NASA mission is successful it depends they start taking tests in a few months, in 4 years a new mission could be designed to collect and bring them back and within 5 or 6 years they would analyze whether in those tests there are fossils of living bacteria or bacteria.
According to Puerta, the most important experiment is the robotic arm that will take samples from the Jezero crater, which was a lake millions of years ago. “This robotic arm is a miracle, it has 3,000 complex little pieces.”
This mission took a helicopter, small and very light, weighing almost two kilos to fly over that meager Martian atmosphere. “If the flight is successful, new missions will transport more robust and complex helicopters. It is very exciting to see these missions crystallize our dreams. It presents us with the challenges that science fiction gave us. Every time we explore a planet in the solar system, it gives us a perspective on our life, on how life on Earth has resisted change, ”Molina emphasizes.
Puerta concludes that “the 21st century is the century in which we will leave the planet. Space exploration has completely changed our lives. We will undoubtedly start living on Mars, in a few decades we will establish bases on that planet and it would not be strange if we found signs saying, ‘Do you want to live on Mars? plumbers, masons, electricians’, hence the importance of integrating scientific culture into the general culture ”.
Image of the wheel of the Rover Perseverance on Mars.
Twitter NASA’s Persistence Mars Rover