Creole talent! Two Venezuelan engineers are part of the Artemis II space mission

Published at: 03/04/2026 10:15 AM

Venezuelan engineers, Nathalie Quintero and Carlos Tomás Mata, are a fundamental part of the Artemis II space mission that took off last April 1 to this lunar space.

Quintero and Mata are part of the team that developed the Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket in the history of space navigation, as well as the protection systems that guaranteed the key launch so that Orion I could take off safely and take astronauts to lunar space for the first time in 50 years.

Quintero, a Caracas graduate of Simón Bolívar University and with postgraduate training at Cornell University, oversees the operations of the Core Stage, the “heart” of the rocket that will propel the Orion capsule into deep space. While Mata, a native of Sucre state, with a consolidated track record at the Kennedy Space Center, developed the necessary technology to protect the SLS from lightning strikes on the launch pad.

The crew is made up of Commander Reid Wiseman, specialist Christina Koch and pilot Victor Glover, all three from NASA, as well as Jeremy Hansen, from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), will orbit the Moon, more than 400,000 kilometers away from Earth, the farthest point a human crew has reached, which will also set the conditions for the exploration of Mars.

Mazo News Team