“My parents came here from Mexico with the vision of giving us a better life than they had but, times were tough. When I was young, there were many days and nights where we had to get by with what we had. My dad worked his way up in the fabrication industry in Houston and when an opportunity came for him to start his own business, he took it. It was “now or never”. Shortly after, things changed. By the time I was in 5thgrade, our lives took a turn for the better, and going to college all of a sudden became a possibility. But even then, working at NASA felt like it could happen in a dream.
“Growing up here in Houston, you visit Space Center and you look at JSC , and you think, ‘Man, it must be incredible to be a part of NASA and to be a part of one of those amazing missions where you accomplish impossible things and maybe even discover something new about our universe’. I would have never guessed, never predicted, that I would be here. Throughout my career, I just continued to do the best I could and kept learning, striving to get better.
“It took years but it felt like all of the sudden, I was here and everything, the entire time, was preparing me for my role on the OSIRIS-REx mission. Now, I share a place in history next to a Curation team full of the most talented, intelligent and hard-working individuals in the world and all that we have accomplished is, and will be, a part of NASA forever. I can’t even begin to describe what that means to not only me, but for my family, who did everything they could so that this could even be a possibility. For all of us, it is a dream come true.”
—Salvador Martinez III, Lead Astromaterial Curation Engineer, Jacobs Technology, NASA’s Johnson Space Center
Image Credit: NASA/James Blair
Interviewer: NASA/Thalia Patrinos