“Right from the get go, I think girls, and Latinas in particular, just aren't picturing themselves doing that from a young age,” said the former astronaut.

Ochoa spent 30 years at NASA and was the the first Hispanic to serve as director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“We knew we only had a few years left where the space shuttle would be available, and we wanted to see what companies could come up with to provide that as a service to NASA, which was, of course, quite a different model than we'd had before,” she said.

“I think as you look across the space landscape now — and thinking beyond just human spaceflight, but other companies that are developing other launch vehicles ...

And I think investors are very excited now about being part of that industry,” she said.

Ochoa says she is lucky to have witnessed the Earth from space over a span of four missions, and that it has shaped the way she views the world.

“You really see it as a continuum of everyone around the planet being related, connected,” said the former astronaut.

“We spent a lot of time looking at that thin layer of atmosphere that you see as you look at the curvature of the Earth and realizing it looks so thin and fragile compared to the size of the Earth,” she said.