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JOSEFINA Salazar Morales

  • Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2018

  • University of Texas at Austin, Aerospace Engineering, '20

  • Host Institution: Planet

  • Mentor: José Hernández

Josefina Salazar Morales is a fourth year Aerospace Engineering student at the University of Texas at Austin. Born in Costa Rica, Josefina has dreamed of exploring the outermost edges of the galaxy and has always had a deep passion for discovering the unknown. Her goal is to become a leader in the space industry and develop innovative spacecraft to make impactful scientific discoveries.

At UT, Josefina is involved in a student-led research team called the Texas Spacecraft Laboratory, which aims to design and build small satellites, secure them into space, and operate them once in orbit. She is currently the Flight Hardware Team Lead working on a mission for the University Nanosatellite Program and has worked on the Communications Team to operate ARMADILLO, a CubeSat that recently launched on the Falcon Heavy STP-2 Mission. This satellite aims to research and characterize the space debris environment in low-earth orbit.

She is also the previous President for the Women in Aerospace for Leadership and Development (WIALD), a student organization at UT whose objective is to facilitate the development of leadership skills for women in all undergraduate engineering majors. This year they are designing an original RC Aircraft to participate in the SAE Aero Design Competition.

Josefina has a passion for leadership and empowering other women. She is a WEP Peer Assistance Leader (PAL), an Aerospace Peer Advisor, and the Prospective Student Coordinator for the Aerospace Department. She also enjoys painting, playing video games, and coming up with sci-fi movie ideas.

As a 2018 Brooke Owens Fellow, Josefina worked with Planet in San Francisco on the Electrical Engineering Team and integrated an OTS camera module into the next generation of Earth-imaging satellites. This past summer she worked at Intel on the SoC Backend Team and the Business Operations Team, optimizing several of their data acquisition scripts and organizing their personnel.