MARIA CABALLERO

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Consulting Engineer

Educational Product

Educators & Students Lexile Level: 1010-1200L

Level

3

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Level 1: Less than 810

Level 2: 810-1000L

Level 3: 1010-1200L

Level 4: 1210-1400L
visiona

If Maria Caballero could have one superpower, it 

would be to fly. 

When she was young, Maria would lay in her 

yard, stare up at the California sky and dream 

she could design and build airplanes of the 

future. She wasn’t sure how she would get there, 

or if she could do it. Maria was confident of only 

one thing. She knew she loved airplanes.

If ever there were any doubt about her affection 

for aviation, they disappeared on April 14, 1981, 

during a trip to Edwards Air Force Base in 

California. Astronauts John Young and Robert 

Crippen were coming back to Earth aboard 

the Space Shuttle Columbia to end the first 

shuttle mission. Standing on the dry lakebed 

a few thousand yards from the runway, Maria 

watched a tiny black and white speck turn into a 

beautiful winged spaceship. Two NASA chase 

planes escorted Columbia as it dropped like a 

brick toward the lakebed. Twin sonic booms 

announced Young and Crippen’s arrival. Flying 

as a glider, Columbia’s landing gear kissed the 

clay runway and soon rolled to a stop.

With Columbia resting still, having been 

moving 17,500 mph in Earth orbit just an hour 

before, Maria could see it represented the best 

of NASA research in space and aeronautics. She 

was hooked for good.

“Since I cannot fly, the next best thing is working 

for and being part of an agency that is involved 

with things that fly and blast through our 

atmosphere, such as airplanes and rockets,” 

Maria said. 

Fast forward more than 30 years. Today, Maria 

is an aerospace engineer working for NASA 

at the Armstrong Flight Research Center in 

California, the very place Columbia landed at all 

those years ago. 

Maria is part of the Flight Safety and Mission 

Assurance Office at Armstrong. She is an 

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Range Safety Risk 

Analyst. Her job is to help make sure no one 

in the public could get hurt if there were a 

problem with a remotely-piloted drone during 

a test flight. A big part of that job is to make 

sure it either remains in restricted airspace set 

up for the test, or doesn’t accidentally fly over 

cities. And it’s more than just plotting a course 

on a map. Part of her job is to determine how 

reliably an aircraft can operate on its own and 
ary

make the right decisions to prevent any danger 

to the public.

The path Maria took to get to her job today 

began in California, made a stop in Virginia 

on the U.S. east coast, and returned her to the 

California desert.

Maria grew up in a migrant family in the San 

Joaquin Valley in California. 

From the age of 12 until she began attending 

college, she spent her summer days picking garlic 

and grapes with her family in California. During 

the school year she spent the evenings doing 

her homework, usually with little help from her 

parents who couldn’t speak English.

But that was OK. Maria’s parents gave her 

encouragement and love, which helped keep her 

going. Maria remembers how her father wanted 

her and her siblings to experience life working in 

the fields so they could see how hard life could 

be without an education. 

Her hard work studying helped. After high 

school, Maria was accepted into the Honors 

Program at California State University in 

Bakersfield, California. Later she attended 

California Polytechnic State University in San 

Luis Obispo, where she majored in engineering.

As the first in her family to go to college, she 

didn’t know what to expect. She signed up for 

calculus and physics, thinking, “How hard can 

this be?” Unfortunately, she hadn’t taken any 

physics classes in high school. She had trouble 

learning the basics that her professor assumed 

she knew. Not knowing where to go for help, 

she quit the class. 

However, she didn’t give up. She found help, 

signed up for the class a second time, and earned 

an ‘A.’ Even though she had other ups and 

downs throughout her college experience, her 

hard work was rewarded. 

Finding money to pay for college was another 

struggle. Maria earned some scholarships, but 

not enough to pay for everything. She took 

weekend jobs at school, and during the summer 

she went back to work in the fields.

Looking back, Maria knows now there are things 

she could have done to help herself. Working 

during the summer for an aerospace company 
was one idea, but she didn’t know how to get 

that kind of job. She also knows it would have 

been helpful for her to have a mentor she could 

look to for advice about doing well in school.

Maria said another thing she learned in 

college was how important it is to work hard 

at everything you do so you can do a good job. 

She said that even means working long hours 

and giving up doing something else that might 

be more fun. This kind of college experience 

prepares students for some of the things they 

will face during their careers.

After graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in 

Aeronautical Engineering, Maria accepted a job 

working as an electrical technician for the Army 

at Fort Hunter Liggett in California. While 

there, she worked on military tanks that were 

used in simulated warfare.

She also spent some time working for the 

NASA Sounding Rocket Program at the 

Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Sounding 

rockets are typically used to launch small 

science experiments into the upper atmosphere 

or to the edge of space.

One of Maria’s favorite projects that she worked 

on was the first one she was assigned when 

she became a NASA employee. The project 

involved Helios, a 12-foot-long solar powered 

airplane with a 247-foot wingspan. When it flew 

in August 2011, the Helios Prototype aircraft 

reached 96,863 feet in altitude, setting a world 

record for a non-rocket powered aircraft flying 

in level flight. 

Maria was sent to Hawaii as a NASA Safety 

Witness for the aircraft’s flight termination test.

Back at Armstrong, Maria is active with 

Armstrong’s education programs. She is the 

consulting engineer for Armstrong’s Office 

of Education, and is involved with NASA’s 

Engineering Design Challenge. Maria also 

teaches the Engineering Design Process to 

students of all ages, working with them to build 

rockets, gliders, rovers and satellites. 

Maria also volunteers to speak at community 

schools and colleges about life as a rocket 

scientist, aerospace engineer, and her humble 

beginnings as a migrant kid who worked in the 

fields during her summer breaks. Maria also is 

active as a mentor at Armstrong, working with 

newly-hired employees and student employees.

Her hope is that her work at NASA will 

inspire kids with the excitement and wonder of 

aviation and space, just as she was.

NP-2024-01-3224-HQ

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Headquarters

300 E. Street, SW

Washington, DC 20546

Educators! 

Guide/assessment files 

for this reader are at 

https://www.nasa.gov/

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