Inspiring Native American figures in NASA

Six months ago, NASA launched the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport spacecraft, or InSight in a mission to retrieve samples from  the planet Mars.  The spacecraft finally landed on Mars this past week.  The landing was an exciting spectacle, with millions of people tuning in to a live stream to watch. A member of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory team is a Navajo engineer by the name of Aaron Yazzie.  

It is actually very rare to hear about a Native American working for NASA.  Native Americans are the most underrepresented in STEM fields.  In the 2012 study by the National Science Foundation, “American Indians and Alaska Natives received 1.3% of science and engineering associate’s degrees and less than 1% of science and engineering bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees.”  And take into account the field is highly competitive and not every engineer, mathematician, technologist, or scientist will get the opportunity to send a spacecraft to Mars.

Yazzie’s story has reached hundreds of Native youth through social media, making him a role model.  Not only because he is a successful engineer, but because he is a kid from the Rez. I wanted to know more about his story and found that he’s not the Native first engineer to make an impact in the Space program.

By Noetta Harjo