In June, Katya Echazarreta, a 27-year-old electrical engineer, made history when she became the first Mexican-born woman to travel to space. Now, she’s gracing the cover of Vogue México as a “voice of change.”
For the cover, Echazarreta wears the uniform she wore aboard NS-21 for the Blue Origin space mission. The rest of the photos within the cover story feature space-like gear, futuristic styles, and even a NASA graphic tee.
The engineer, who moved to the U.S. at the age of seven, told the magazine what that moment of traveling to space meant to her. “It has changed my life, not only because of the fact of doing it and everything that happened after,” she tells Vogue México. “But also because of how I see life, my perspective on everything, now it is different.”
Echazarreta was selected from a pool of 7,000 applicants by the nonprofit organization Space Humanity to participate in the space mission funded by billionaire Jeff Bezos.
The space mission shared a video of Echazarreta and the five other passengers when they took off — launching more than 62 miles above the Earth’s surface.. The look on Echazarreta’s face from the video inside the rocket said it all. “I wasn’t thinking about anything at all. Your mind can’t even… you can’t think of anything, you just stare at it like you’re hypnotized,” she says in this new interview.
The young engineer also took the time to credit her mother, who didn’t have the same opportunities as her growing up, and her home country of Mexico for achieving her dreams. “Mexicans are hard workers,” she exclaims. “I thank my roots for that because I have always understood that to get to do what I wanted, I would have to work a lot and very hard. It’s part of our culture. We see [working hard] as normal.”
She also mentions her awareness of people’s limiting beliefs of those within her culture. She adds, “I am Mexican in a society that thinks that we should not be in those places, that we are not intelligent enough, capable enough, or, for some reason, just because of who we are, we don’t deserve to be in those places.”
That’s why in the future, she hopes to create space programs and institutions in Mexico to give younger generations the same opportunities. So that others don’t have to travel to the United States to get the same chance. “I would like to create them here so that they do not have to leave their country,” says Echazarreta. But for now, she hopes to continue sharing more about her career journey on her social platforms to inspire others.