Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Digital Collections

NASA Career

Candy Torres Collection - Flight 7A Team 2mb Version - 010.jpg

In 1984, Torres moved to Houston to work on software for the Space Shuttle flight controllers. A brand new program at the time, her career would see her work on the vast majority of the Space Shuttle's missions. Her projects included creating a long-term space habitation database and other computerization projects. Torres had no illusions about what she achieved.

"I'd go to Building 1, where I had an office, and on the door, there was a metal [plaque] with the NASA logo engraved on it, and I would caress it, literally, touch it," she said. "Because I knew what it had taken for me to get there. So I never saw it as just another job."

Torres eventually became a flight controller for the International Space Station, the single most ambitions and expensive multinational effort in history. She and her team are pictured above, preparing for an ISS assembly mission in 2001.

Throughout it all, Torres never forgot what inspired her to dream. A huge fan of science-fiction, Torres remains a Star Trek fan and wasn't afraid to show it.

Candy Torres Collection - Hubble Mockup JSC Cropped - 019.jpg

Candy in front of a mock-up of the Hubble Space Telescope at the Johnson Space Center, possibly to train astronauts for the famous mission to replace a damaged mirror.