Frank Rubio, the first astronaut of Salvadoran descent, continues his mission on the International Space Station, where he lives with nine other astronauts as they advance microgravity studies and lab maintenance thousands of kilometers from Earth.
A shot shared this week by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA, reflects the astronaut’s excitement minutes after he was greeted by fellow crewmates, Jessica Watkins and Bob Hines, shortly after their arrival at the orbiting laboratory on September 21, 2022.
New aerospace engineer Frank Rubio got into space physics by fitting devices to study smart glass optics inside a microgravity glovebox.
This research explores the use of artificial intelligence to adapt the manufacture of materials, such as optical fibers, to the vacuum of space.
His cosmonauts, flight engineers Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petlin of Roscosmos, spent time offloading the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship and working on a variety of life support missions.
The duo also took turns studying ways to drive spacecraft and robots on future planetary missions.
Rubio is a doctor and former US Army paratrooper officer in Miami. His nationality is American, but his mother is Salvadoran and lived the first six years of his life in the country.
