Elisa Victoria Quintana is an American

scientist A scientist is a person who Scientific method, researches to advance knowledge in an Branches of science, area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engag ...

working in the field of

astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...

and

planetary science Planetary science (or more rarely, planetology) is the scientific study of planets (including Earth), celestial bodies (such as moons, asteroids, comets) and planetary systems (in particular those of the Solar System) and the processes of ...

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C., in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959, as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC ...

. Her research focuses the detection and characterization of

exoplanets An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first confirmed detection of an exoplanet was in 1992 around a pulsar, and the first detection around a main-sequence star was in 1995. A different planet, first detec ...

in addition to studying how they form. She is best known for the detection of

Kepler 186f Kepler-186f (also known by its Kepler object of interest designation ''KOI-571.05'') is an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Kepler-186, the outermost of five such planets discovered around the star b ...

, the first Earth-sized planet found in the

habitable zone In astronomy and astrobiology, the habitable zone (HZ), or more precisely the circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ), is the range of orbits around a star within which a planetary surface can support liquid water given sufficient atmospheric pressu ...

of a

star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

other than the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

Early life and education

Quintana was born in

Silver City, New Mexico Silver City is a town in Grant County, New Mexico, United States. It is the county seat and the home of Western New Mexico University. As of the 2010 census the population was 10,315. As of the 2020 census, the population was 9,704. History ...

. Her father Leroy Quintana, is a Chicano poet and her grandfather was a miner who appeared in

blacklisted Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list; if people are on a blacklist, then they are considere ...

movie

Salt of the Earth Salt of the earth is a phrase used by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, part of a discourse on salt and light. Salt of the earth may also refer to: Film * Salt of the Earth (1954 film), ''Salt of the Earth'' (1954 film), an American drama film ...

. Aged 9 she moved to

San Diego San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

. She attended

Grossmont College Grossmont College is a public community college in El Cajon, California. Its name originated with the silent film actor and producer William J. Gross, who was enticed by Ed Fletcher to invest in the purchase of land, part of which was called Gro ...

and transferred to the

University of California at San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Sc ...

where she obtained a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in Physics. During her time as an undergraduate Quintana worked on

astrodynamics Orbital mechanics or astrodynamics is the application of ballistics and celestial mechanics to rockets, satellites, and other spacecraft. The motion of these objects is usually calculated from Newton's laws of motion and the Newton's law of univ ...

the

KidSat Sally Ride EarthKAM (Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students) is a NASA educational outreach program started in 1996. The program was initiated by JoBea Way Holt, an Earth scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and was initial ...

program (later renamed

EarthKAM Sally Ride EarthKAM (Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students) is a NASA educational outreach program started in 1996. The program was initiated by JoBea Way Holt, an Earth scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and was initia ...

) with first US woman

astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...

Sally Ride Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut and physicist. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman and the third woman to fly in space, after cosmonauts V ...

who was a professor in San Diego. She received

Master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional prac ...

s in both Aerospace Science and

Physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

from the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

and earned her

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in Physics from the

in 2004. Her PhD thesis for on the topic of

planet formation The nebular hypothesis is the most widely accepted model in the field of cosmogony to explain the formation and evolution of the Solar System (as well as other planetary systems). It suggests the Solar System is formed from gas and dust orbiting t ...

binary star A binary star or binary star system is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Binary stars in the night sky that are seen as a single object to the naked eye are often resolved as separate stars us ...

systems. Quintana was amongst the first people to study whether planets could form in the

Alpha Centauri Alpha Centauri (, α Cen, or Alpha Cen) is a star system in the southern constellation of Centaurus (constellation), Centaurus. It consists of three stars: Rigil Kentaurus (), Toliman (), and Proxima Centauri (). Proxima Centauri ...

system.

Academic career

Quintana was a member of the NASA

Kepler Mission The Kepler space telescope is a defunct space telescope launched by NASA in 2009 to discover Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orb ...

Team at

NASA Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...

from 2006 to 2017. She worked as a scientific programmer developing the Kepler pipeline, for which she was awarded the NASA Software of the Year in 2010. She was part of the team that discovered the first rocky exoplanet

Kepler-10b Kepler-10b is the first confirmed terrestrial planet to have been discovered outside the Solar System by the Kepler Space Telescope. Discovered after several months of data collection during the course of the NASA-directed Kepler Mission, which ...

, the first exoplanet to orbit the

of another star

Kepler-22b Kepler-22b (also known by its Kepler Object of Interest designation ''KOI-087.01'') is an exoplanet orbiting within the Circumstellar habitable zone, habitable zone of the Solar analog, Sun-like star Kepler-22. It is located about from Earth i ...

, and the first Earth-sized exoplanet

Kepler-20e Kepler-20e is an exoplanet orbiting Kepler-20. The planet is notable as it is the first planet with a smaller radius than Earth found orbiting a Sun-like star. The planet is second-closest to the star after Kepler-20b, and at , it is far too h ...

. In 2014, she led the team that discovered

Kepler-186f Kepler-186f (also known by its Kepler object of interest designation ''KOI-571.05'') is an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Kepler-186, the outermost of five such planets discovered around the star ...

, an earth-sized exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone a

red dwarf A red dwarf is the smallest kind of star on the main sequence. Red dwarfs are by far the most common type of fusing star in the Milky Way, at least in the neighborhood of the Sun. However, due to their low luminosity, individual red dwarfs are ...

star, which was published in the journal

Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

. Quintana has been studying the frequency of giant impacts on exoplanets and comparing how their frequency compares with

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

. In 2017, she moved to the

Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C., in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959, as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC ...

in Maryland, where she serves as Deputy Project Scientist for the

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (shortened as the Roman Space Telescope, Roman, or RST) is a NASA infrared space telescope in development and scheduled to launch to a Sun–Earth L2 orbit by May 2027. It is named after former NASA Chie ...

(formerly known as the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope) and Deputy Project Scientist for the

Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a space telescope for NASA's Explorer program, designed to search for exoplanets using the transit method in an area 400 times larger than that covered by the Kepler mission. It was launched on ...

. Quintana is one of the few female

Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...

scientists in

Awards and honors

* 2014

Lupe Ontiveros Guadalupe Ontiveros (; September 17, 1942 – July 26, 2012) was an American actress best known for portraying Rosalita in '' The Goonies'', and Yolanda Saldívar in the film ''Selena''. She acted in numerous films and television shows. Ontive ...

Dream Award. * 2015 Scientist of the Year award from Great Minds in STEM for the discovery of Kepler-186f * 2019 Goddard Space Flight Center Honors Award - Leadership * 2020 Honor Award - Equal Employment Opportunity Medal

Selected publications

Elisa Quintana has published numerous publications on topics in

, specifically the

Kepler mission The Kepler space telescope is a defunct space telescope launched by NASA in 2009 to discover Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orb ...

. * Borucki, W. J., Koch, D., Quintana, E., Basri, G., Batalha, N., Brown, T., Caldwell, D., ... & Prsa, A. (2010)
Kepler planet-detection mission: introduction and first results
Science, 327(5968), 977-980. * Koch, D. G., Borucki, W. J., Quintana, E., Basri, G., Batalha, N. M., Brown, T. M., Caldwell, D., ... & Wu, H. (2010)
Kepler mission design, realized photometric performance, and early science
The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 713(2), L79. * Jenkins, J. M., Caldwell, D. A., Chandrasekaran, H., Twicken, J. D., Bryson, S. T., Quintana, E. V., ... & Borucki, W. J. (2010)
Overview of the Kepler science processing pipeline
The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 713(2), L87. * Quintana, E. V., Adams, F. C., Lissauer, J. J., & Chambers, J. E. (2007)
Terrestrial planet formation around individual stars within binary star systems
The Astrophysical Journal, 660(1), 807.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Quintana, Elisa University of Michigan alumni Grossmont College alumni American women astronomers NASA astrophysicists University of California, San Diego alumni Living people 1973 births Discoverers of exoplanets People from Silver City, New Mexico American planetary scientists American women planetary scientists