CLEVELAND — At NASA's Glenn Research Center, past all the spacecraft and rockets, you'll find Dionne Hernandez-Lugo working on power systems that will soon propel astronauts back to the Moon.
Hernandez-Lugo's story started in Puerto Rico, where she fell in love with space at a young age.
“NASA was my dream. Growing up, I will see a shuttle launch on TV and I always wanted to come and work here,” said Hernandez-Lugo, the deputy flight system manager for the power propulsion element.
But being on a small island, NASA seemed so far.
“You don't have a NASA center, you don't have this type of representation of heavy scientists and researchers from NASA,” said Hernandez-Lugo.
But she didn’t let that stop her. Once she got to the University of Puerto Rico, she studied NASA research on her way to a chemistry degree.
“So that allowed me to apply for the NASA fellowship, called the Harriet Jenkins Fellowship,” said Hernandez-Lugo.
From there, her career took off. Nine years later, she's working on the Artemis mission, which NASA hopes will return humans to the moon.
“My responsibility is to build the spacecraft that will provide power, high rate communication, attitude control, and orbital transfer,” said Hernandez-Lugo.
That spacecraft is known as the Gateway.
“The Gateway is a small space station that will orbit around the moon and will allow crews to have more access to the lunar surface,” said Hernandez-Lugo.
Every day she's working on sending astronauts into the heavens, she's on cloud 9 herself.
“I can't believe it, right? Because it was a dream. I didn't know how to get here. But thank God," she said.
What makes it even sweeter is being able to represent her community alongside so many others.
“So for me overall, I think diversity in any way is important, we have people from all over in all areas,” said Hernandez-Lugo.
She hopes the next generation will follow in their footsteps.
“We definitely need this Artemis generation. We have the Apollo generation, but right now, we're in the Artemis generation, and we need a higher number of women in science to help us out through this admission,” said Hernandez-Lugo.
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