Lady Diana Trujillo Pomerantz became the most sought-after personality on Google, surpassing even the President of Colombia, Iván Duque, after participating in the mission that took the “Perseverance” rover on the planet Mars last Thursday.
The Cali-born aerospace engineer, who in 2007 became the first Latin American woman to be admitted to the NASA Space Academy, this time was responsible – in addition to participating in the design of the robot arm and two exploration tools called Pixl and Sherloc – for introducing the world. the arrival of the robot on Mars, in the first live broadcast in Spanish of a NASA space mission.
The exploratory vehicle, considered the most advanced that has been sent into space so far, weighs about a ton, measures about 3 meters long and 2.7 wide, has more than 30 rooms, an atmosphere analyzer to see the possibility of extracting oxygen, an arm robot and a small 2-kilogram helicopter that will fly over the thin Martian atmosphere that will be on the planet for about a Martian year, 687 days on Earth.
“The purpose of the” Perseverance “mission is to find out if there has ever been life on the surface of Mars. We will reach a place called Jezero Crater. In that crater we will do research, because there is clay that can tell us if there was water … If we find that, we will also do research to find out if life probably started on Mars and Earth at the same time. So we have a very interesting question to answer, “Diana said during an interview with CNN.
“Perseverance” was launched on July 30, 2020 and it took seven months to reach the red planet, as part of the “Mars Rover Perseverance” mission, one of the most important in exploring the planet.
She says that her passion for astronomy was born while living in Colombia, “in the 80’s, a period of great violence in my country, I would spend it looking at the sky to give me peace. I’ve always wondered how stars and planets could coexist without chaos, and that’s how it all started for me. “
Read also: Robot Perseverance sends more images of Mars
Caleña, whose father is an accountant and lives in Colombia, lives in the United States with her mother. He came to that country when he was 17 years old, without knowing English and ended up looking for a way to learn the language and thus start his university studies.
With only $ 300 in her pocket and the intention to help her mother with household finances, Diana began working as a housekeeper and paid for her English classes at Miami Dade College. But he was so bored with the same thing that he slipped into the math department’s classrooms: “I got bored learning English and sat down to answer any math questions they had, because I didn’t need to speak any language. 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 had four jobs, tasks that allowed him to begin his studies in space science and eventually in aerospace engineering at the University of Florida.
So she was encouraged to apply to NASA Academy, where she became one of only two people in her cohort to be hired. While there, he visited the University of Maryland, where he helped Professor Brian Roberts research how robots would work in space. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland in 2007. Her story was turned into a children’s science book by Kari Cornell and Fatima Khan.
“I knew that NASA was the only place where I could do what I set out to do, I wanted to explore, I wasn’t looking for any kind of recognition, but rather learning,” he says.
“After I graduated, I worked with a program to transport goods to the Space Station, then ‘Curiosity’ and now Mars 2020 and sometimes I don’t think when I start to think I have nothing and I didn’t know the language,” he told her. then El País, Caleña, who is a graduate of Colegio Cañaverales.
She thinks 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 earn for two or three months, you earn for five years.”
And he adds: “And you understand that every time a door opens, you go, you go. The more difficult the situation, the more you want. What we need is the will and that survival paste that you have in your heart ”.
Diana says she doesn’t want to miss that moment when I find life on Mars, but there are many projects she has waiting for her: “I want to see if I can work with astronauts, go to Mars and the Moon and continue working in the organization. with whom I am ”.
With her husband William Pomerantz, an American scientist launching rockets into space, Diana also leads the Brooke Owen Fellowship Foundation, which helps college graduates, especially Latinas and other minorities, provide an opportunity in the aerospace industry.
Diana Trujillo was the first Hispanic migrant at the Space Academy. At first he worked in the NASA area dedicated to building unmanned spacecraft.
Photo taken from Twitter
Descent to Mars
The descent to Mars of the “Mars Rover Perseverance” mission is one of the most important in exploring the red planet. “I think what we will discover with this mission could be a concern to understand or solve the climate problem and how to take care of planet Earth,” Caleña told the BBC.
“If we realize that we are not alone in the universe, forget it, it’s like when someone realizes that the car doesn’t belong to him, that it was borrowed and goes, he washes it and cleans it. You’re going to have to reevaluate and have that introspection and say, “God, if I’m not the only one, then I need to do this better.” And my analogy with the car is exactly the planet Earth, when you realize that you are not the only one, that the car was not yours, you have to 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 or not there is life on that planet and to prepare the manned missions that will land there, ie the first human beings on Mars. It is a milestone greater than the descent of the first humans to the moon more than 50 years ago.
In his turn, the coordinator of the Bogota Planetarium, Carlos Augusto Molina, states that “Mars is a target of interest because it tells very well some of the moments of the formation of the solar system. “Perseverance” wants to study the properties of Martian soil, its humidity, atmosphere and try to draw the biological profile of a planet like Mars. “
“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 when the missions enter atmosphere and atmospheric friction begin to heat the protective shield, any communication with the control room is lost and the mission must maneuver automatically to brake from 20 thousand kilometers per hour to a smooth descent to the surface, a fact that involved to have parachutes, retro missiles and technological models for surface analysis ”.
Precisely, Perseverance descended on the Martian surface supported by a “heavenly crane”, for this reason it survived the so-called “Seven Minutes of Terror”, which is the period of entry and descent into the Martian atmosphere where temperature and risk were maximum.
If this NASA mission is successful, it depends on starting testing in a few months, in 4 years a new mission could be designed to collect and bring them back and in 5 or 6 years it would analyze if there are any in these tests. fossils of live bacteria or bacteria.
According to Puerta, the most important experiment is the robotic arm that will take samples from the Jezero crater, which millions of years ago was a lake. “This robotic arm is a miracle, it has 3,000 small complex pieces.”
This mission took a helicopter, small and very light, weighing almost 2 kilograms to fly over that thin Martian atmosphere. “If the flight is successful, the new missions will transport more robust and complex helicopters. It is very interesting to see how these missions crystallize our dreams. It puts us in front of the challenges that science fiction has given us. Every time we explore a planet in the solar system, it gives us a perspective on our lives, on how life on planet Earth has withstood changes, “says Molina.
Puerta concludes that “the 21st century is the century in which we will leave the planet. Exploring space has completely changed our lives. We will end up living on Mars, no doubt, in a few decades we will establish bases on that planet and it would not be strange if we found signs that say “Do you want to live on Mars? plumbers, masons, electricians, hence the importance of integrating scientific culture into general culture ”.
Image of the Rover Perseverance wheel on Mars.
Twitter Perseverance of NASA’s Mars Rover