Space engineer Elio Morillo immigrated to the U.S. from Ecuador as a child and grew up to work on NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. He spoke with PW about the trajectory he charts in his memoir, The Boy Who Reached for the Stars (HarperOne, June).
What kind of work have you done as a space engineer?
While working the Mars mission, I helped put together the Earth version of the rover. You want to keep the version that goes to space as pristine as possible, ready for the challenges of space travel. The Earth version—you want to break it. That’s how you learn to fix any problems it may encounter. You use this version to update software, develop new features, test and test again. When the one on Mars runs into trouble, you use the Earth version to replicate what happened on Mars and then develop a workaround.
You write about wanting to “hold the doors wide open for the next generations.” Can you talk a bit about that?
The U.S. population right now is 20% Hispanic, but only about 8% of engineers in STEM fields are Hispanic, so there’s a clear gap. Engineering jobs are some of the most financially safe jobs that exist as well as some of the most rewarding and difficult, and we’re underrepresented. I’ve been very fortunate, despite my low-income background, and part of my mission in telling my story is creating awareness and access to resources for people who are interested in pursuing careers in STEM. There’s a bunch of us on social media right now, talking about the day-to-day of our STEM careers. We need more of that.
What connections do you see between your career and your upbringing?
My mother was a model of resilience, of caring for others. Her love for me was selfless. The mission that I worked on couldn’t have been named any better—Perseverance. The rover traveled through space for many months, and that work requires a lot of patience, a lot of grit, effort, teamwork, and trust. In the process we learned so much about ourselves, about our opportunities for growth. There are a lot of parallels. One of the beautiful exercises of writing this book has been reflecting on my life and how these decisions got me here.
What was it like seeing Perseverance take off?
I made sure I was surrounded by friends and family. It was July 2020, the middle of the pandemic, and I hadn’t seen my mom in several months. A bunch of us took the risk of flying, still a scary thing to do, and stayed at a friend’s house in Orlando. My closest friends from high school and college, my mom, and my brother’s family were all there and able to share it. It couldn’t have been a more beautiful day. It was a moment of relief to see that rocket take off with our baby on board after all our hard work and effort. That was just the start of the journey. Rocket launches are scary; things can go wrong. We watched the rocket rise, hoping everything would go well. The mission ops team was narrating everything that was going on. My mom was next to me on the beach.
