Yes, you heard that right! Our Latine community is brilliant and essential all around and we are seeing that through this week’s science news. These students from P.R.’s Interamerican University School of Engineering in Bayamón are representing their community, by taking up space in the science world. NASA’s new satellite launching into space soon could not have been made possible without the brains of these Puerto Rican students (see photo below). The satellite known as the PR-CuNaR2 will launch as part of Elon Musk’s Mission 23 of his aerospace company, SpaceX.

Additionally, there were so many students that helped form this satellite. According to Remezcla, about “65 students have been part of the development of the PR-CuNaR2” [1]. Although several students were part of this hard work, the last student team to work on the satellite was made up by these special Puerto Rican students, including Natalie Cruz, Xavier Álvarez, Héctor González, Ian Huertas, Wilhem Sánchez Rodríguez, Jesús Marrero Colón, Carlos Vergara Quiles, Lucas Soto Balseiro, Edwardivan Labarca and Carlos Figueroa Gibson. 

The PR-CuNaR2 is scheduled for launch on August 29, 2021, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. So the next time you hear about this, remember that it was built and finished by members of our Latine community! 

References:

[1] Martinez, Kiko. “These Puerto Rican Students Designed a Satellite That NASA Will Launch into Space.” Remezcla, July 2021. 

https://remezcla.com/culture/puerto-rican-students-satellite-nasa-space-launch/