Elisa Quintana facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Elisa Victoria Quintana
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Quintana backed by an artist's impression of Kepler 186f
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| Born | 1973 (age 51–52) |
| Alma mater | University of Michigan, Grossmont College, University of California at San Diego |
| Known for | Astronomy |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Institutions | Astrophysicist NASA Goddard Space Flight Center |
| Doctoral advisor | Fred Adams |
Elisa Victoria Quintana is an amazing scientist who works at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She studies space, especially planets! Her job is to find planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets, and learn how they are made.
She is very well known for helping to find Kepler 186f. This was the first planet about the size of Earth found in a 'habitable zone' around another star. A habitable zone is like a sweet spot where it's not too hot and not too cold, so water could exist there.
Becoming a Scientist
Elisa Quintana was born in Silver City, New Mexico. When she was 9, her family moved to San Diego. She went to Grossmont College and then to the University of California at San Diego. There, she earned a degree in Physics.
While she was in college, Elisa worked on a special program called EarthKAM. She got to work with Sally Ride, who was the first American woman to travel to space! Sally Ride was a professor in San Diego at the time.
Higher Education
Elisa then went to the University of Michigan. She earned two Master's degrees there, one in Aerospace Science and another in Physics. In 2004, she got her PhD in Physics from the same university.
Her PhD work was about how planets form around binary star systems. These are systems where two stars orbit each other. Elisa was one of the first people to study if planets could form in the Alpha Centauri system, which is the closest star system to our Sun.
Working at NASA
Elisa Quintana was a key member of the Kepler Mission Team at NASA Ames Research Center from 2006 to 2017. She helped create the computer programs that processed data from the Kepler telescope. For this important work, she won the NASA Software of the Year award in 2010.
She was part of the team that found many exciting exoplanets:
- Kepler-10b: The first rocky exoplanet ever found.
- Kepler-22b: The first exoplanet found orbiting in a star's habitable zone.
- Kepler-20e: The first Earth-sized exoplanet discovered.
In 2014, Elisa led the team that found Kepler-186f. This planet is about the same size as Earth and orbits a red dwarf star in its habitable zone. This amazing discovery was published in a famous science magazine called Science.
Elisa also studies how often huge crashes, like the one that might have formed our Moon, happen on other planets. She compares these events on exoplanets to what happened on Earth.
In 2017, she moved to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Now, she helps lead two big space projects:
- The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope: This new telescope will help us find even more exoplanets and study dark energy.
- The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS): This mission searches for exoplanets by looking for tiny dips in a star's brightness.
Elisa Quintana is also special because she is one of the few female Hispanic scientists working in astronomy.
Awards and Honors
Elisa Quintana has received several awards for her important work:
- 2014: Lupe Ontiveros Dream Award
- 2015: Scientist of the Year award from Great Minds in STEM for finding Kepler-186f
- 2019: Goddard Space Flight Center Honors Award - Leadership
- 2020: Honor Award - Equal Employment Opportunity Medal
Images for kids
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A robot friend.
