Echazaretta supported Her family on a salary at McDonald's. Now he's going to outer space

A rocket built by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin took his fifth group of passengers to the edge of space, including the first Mexican-born woman, to make such a journey.

A 60-foot suborbital rocket lifted off from Blue Origin's facility in west Texas at 9:26 a.m. ET and landed a group of six people more than 62 miles above Earth's surface-thought to be the limit of space-and gave them several minutes of weightlessness before parachuting.

Most passengers pay an unspecified amount for their seats. But Katya Echazareta, an engineer and scientific communicator from Guadalajara, Mexico, was selected from thousands of candidates to join the mission by a non-profit organization called Space for Humanity.

The organization's goal is to send "incredible leaders" into space and allow them to experience the impact of a shared view, a phenomenon frequently reported by astronauts, who say that seeing Earth from "Space gives them a profound change of perspective. all our faults, all our obstacles, everything - it was all there," he said.

I needed Latinos to see this. And I think it reinforces my mission to continue to educate the vast majority of women and people outside." space and do what they want.

Echazaretta was the first Mexican-born woman to go into space and the second Mexican after Rodolfo Neri Vela, a scientist. He took part in one of NASA's Space Shuttle missions in 1985.

She moved to the United States with her family at the age of seven and recalled being overwhelmed by a new place where she didn't speak the language and a teacher warning her that she might have to abstain.

"It pissed me off, and I think since then, in third grade, I just walked and didn't stop," Echazaretta recalled in an Instagram interview.