MARIA CABALLERO

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Consulting Engineer

Level

4

Lexile Ranges

Level 1: Less than 810

Level 2: 810-1000L

Level 3: 1010-1200L

Level 4: 1210-1400L

Educational Product

Educators & Students Lexile Level: 1210-1400L
WORK HA

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 let her imagination 

transport her to a wondrous place in which she would 

design and build airplanes of the future. 

She wasn’t sure how she would get there. Based on 

her upbringing, the path seemed tortuous, blocked 

with many obstacles. Could she do this? What would 

she have to do to realize her dream. Answers to her 

questions weren’t immediately forthcoming. There were 

more pressing matters to attend to, chief among them 

just growing up.

Maria was confident of only one thing. She knew she 

loved airplanes.

If ever there were any doubt of her intentions, that 

hesitancy was vanquished forever on April 14, 1981 

during a trip to Edwards Air Force Base on the high 

desert of 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 flanked Columbia as it dropped like a brick 

toward the lakebed. Twin sonic booms heralded Young 

and Crippen’s arrival. Flying as a glider, Columbia’s 

landing gear kissed the clay runway and soon rolled to 

a stop.

Resting still, having been moving 17,500 mph in 

Earth orbit just an hour before, Columbia in a single 

glance represented NASA’s future in space and an 

aeronautical research legacy that began in 1915. Maria 

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 three decades. 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 

(UAV) Range Safety Risk Analyst. Her job is to calculate 

the chance someone from the general public might get 

hurt should a UAV – commonly called drones – have 

a problem or fail during flight tests. A big part of that 

job is to ensure the remotely-piloted vehicle remains in 

restricted airspace that is specifically set aside for flight 
RD

test purposes. If the drone must fly beyond the test range, 

her job is to work with the operations engineers and 

flight planners to make sure the aircraft doesn’t stray over 

dense population areas or important structures on the 

ground. And it’s more than just plotting a course on a 

map. Part of the risk assessment must address the vehicles 

systems, especially if the drone is designed to work 

autonomously – deciding for itself how to respond to any 

equipment failures or the presence of nearby air traffic.

Maria hasn’t always had this job, however. The path 

Maria took to get to her current position is one that 

started in California, launched her across the country to 

the Atlantic shores of Virginia, then back full-circle 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, 

her summer days were filled with the difficult, backbreaking work of picking garlic and grapes with her 

friends and family. Nights during the school year were 

spent grappling with homework, often with little 

assistance from her parents, who couldn’t speak English. 

While her parents may not have been able to help her 

with her schoolwork, Maria remembers and most 

appreciated the emotional support they provided, which 

helped keep her going. Maria also remembered 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 hitting the books paid off. After high 

school, Maria was accepted into the Honors Program 

at California State University in Bakersfield, California. 

Later she transferred to the California Polytechnic 

State University in San Luis Obispo, where she 

majored in engineering.

Maria’s time in college was a challenge, both in learning 

engineering and in figuring out to how to survive as a 

college student. 

As the first in her family to go to college, she didn’t 

know what to expect. In her first semester, she signed up 

for calculus and physics, thinking, “How hard can this 

be?” Unfortunately, she hadn’t taken any physics classes 

in high school. The learning curve was steep as she 

struggled with basic physics terms and other concepts 

her professor just assumed everyone knew. Not 

knowing where to go for help, she dropped the class. 

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

for the course a second time, and earned an ‘A.’ Even 

though she had other ups and downs throughout her 

college experience, her persistence paid off. 
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Affording college was another struggle. With some 

money in scholarships, but not enough to cover the 

entire cost of college, she took weekend jobs through 

the work study program at school, and went back to 

work in the fields during the summer.

Looking back, she realizes it would have been helpful 

for her to find internships or other similar experiences 

that would have better prepared her for a career in 

engineering, but she had little guidance pointing out what 

educational resources were available or how to apply for 

something like an internship. Maria understands now 

that finding a mentor to show her the ropes and open 

doors for new learning experiences is a great asset to have 

in college.

At the same time, she said, successful college students 

must be willing to work hard at everything they do, 

even if it requires long hours and sacrificing the chance 

to participate in a more appealing activity. This kind of 

college experience prepares students for times when 

persistence and long hours are required to complete an 

important project with an imminent deadline.

After graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in 

Aeronautical Engineering, Maria accepted a job as a 

contractor working as an electrical technician for the 

Army at Fort Hunter Liggett in California. While there, 

she installed instrumentation into military tanks that 

were to participate in simulated warfare.

She also spent some time working for the NASA 

Sounding Rocket Program at the Wallops Flight 

Facility in Virginia. Sounding rockets come in a variety 

of types and sizes, and are typically used to launch small 

science payloads into the upper atmosphere or to the 

edge of space.

Nearly all engineers have favorite projects they’ve 

worked on, and Maria is no exception. One of her 

favorite projects was the first project assigned to her 

as a civil servant at NASA. Helios was a 12-foot-long, 

247-foot-wingspan solar powered airplane. When it flew 

in August 2011, the Helios Prototype aircraft reached 

96,863 feet in altitude, setting a world record for a nonrocket 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’s own educational experience 

inspired her to remain active with some of NASA’s 

education outreach programs. She is currently 

the consulting engineer for Armstrong’s Office of 

Education, and is involved with NASA’s Engineering 

Design Challenge involving quad-copter drones. 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. 

Having seen the importance of what it means to have 

a mentor when she was in college, Maria also is active 

as a mentor at Armstrong, working with newly-hired 

employees and student interns.

Her hope is that her work at NASA will instill in a 

young child the excitement and wonder of aviation and 

space, just as she experienced so many years ago.

Educators! 

Guide/assessment files 

for this reader are at 

https://www.nasa.gov/

stem-content/

maria-caballero/