Ashley Martinez Ocampo is just 12 years old and already dreams of reaching the stars; she knows that they cannot be touched, but they can be reached. This little girl has become a sensation in Mexico after discovering, from a room in her home in Hidalgo, two asteroids that NASA has recognized and to which she will soon name them.
The little girl is from the municipality of Jojutla, Hidalgo, and has just started high school in her town. In her day-to-day life, Ashley gets up early, has breakfast, and goes to school; she comes back, does her chores, homework, and sleeps. But the weekend is when Ashley spends hours and hours observing space with her telescope.
High school is normal, and his favorite subject is biology, and although mathematics is a bit complicated for him, this is not an impediment for him to study astrobiology, in which he has decided that he wants to specialize.
When Ashley was two years old, it was her father, Andrés Eloy Martínez Rojas, who began to teach her to observe and learn about the sky. The youngest daughter of five brothers and sisters, she tells UN News that at age 5, when she considered that she was old enough to be aware of things, it was she who decided that she would study the universe.
“Since I was very little I liked it, almost when I was born. The truth is that my dad has always liked that. When I started to become aware, at 4 or 5 years old, that’s when I said… oops! space,” she recounted.
fascination with the moon
From then on, Ashley began to observe space with one of her father’s telescopes, which could show her for years beautiful, bright, and enormous things that she could not stop seeing.
The satellite that turned his life around was the moon; for its greatness, its brilliance, and for how beautiful it looks through the lens of his telescope. After that, she Ashley has not been able to stop observing the universe.
“The moon has always fascinated me a lot, when I see the sky in the afternoon, I think what catches my attention the most is the moon, and then the planets (…) Since I was born I already had telescopes, that’s why. My dad taught me how to use them, although he sometimes forgot. And that’s when I began to see the moon, which at night looks very pretty, it looks bright and with its craters”, she says excitedly.
After watching many documentaries and reading books about space, his curiosity grew and, following in his father’s footsteps, he continued to study on his own in a self-taught way.
That’s when the magic happenedAshley discovered two asteroids that have already been recognized by NASA.
FILE: Image of an asteroid.
Two recognized asteroids, eight under review
An ordinary day Ashley found her dad very interested in a computer program in which he had been watching “something” on the screen for hours, out of curiosity he asked him, and he replied that it was a special program that sent the Minor Planet Centerof the International Astronomical Unionso that fans could identify stars in space.
Ahsley told her father to teach her and she was a fast learner. The next time the Minor Planet Center launched a new campaign to identify asteroids, Ashley participated, resulting in the discovery of ten possible asteroids.
“Two have already told us yes (they are recognized), and eight are under review. The first one I found was last year in 2021, in March. It is through a computer program, not through the telescope. In the same campaign, when you sign up, they send you photos so that you can animate them as if it were an animated GIF, and if you find an abnormality, you send a report and they tell you whether or not it is an asteroid, ”he explained.
Women and girls in science
Ashley’s father founded the Urania Astronomical Society in his youth, which is dedicated to giving lectures, organizing star nights, and carrying out various campaigns to find asteroids, with the sole objective that people interested in space can learn from playful way. That’s how Ashley got into science.
Now, the little girl has just participated in the Mexico City Book Fair, where she was a special guest of a conversation entitled “Women and girls in science”, in which she talked about her experience and motivated thousands of Mexican girls to follow their dreams and to become more involved in science.
“If you like it, go ahead, don’t be afraid, it’s a beautiful thing, really. If you are interested, go ahead, look for videos on the internet, look for astronomical societies, feel free, let nothing stop you, ”he encouraged them.
Ashley Martinez has dreamed of learning more about space for as long as she can remember.
Gender equality and recognition of girls and women
Through different agencies, such as UN-Women, International Days and thousands of other initiatives, the United Nations promotes the recognition of women and girls and fights for gender equality
For example, him International Girl’s Dayobserved on October 11, is a date to celebrate and recognize that the empowerment of girls is key to breaking the cycle of discrimination and violenceas well as to promote and protect the full and effective enjoyment of their human rights.
On this recently celebrated day, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the offices in Mexico of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), of the United Nations Entity for the Empowerment of Women and Gender Equality, better known as UN Women, expressed their concern about the situation inequality, violence and discrimination faced by millions of girls and adolescents in the country due to their gender.
According to the Population Fund, the 2010 Population and Housing Census of Mexico showed that 0.06% of 12-year-old girls have already had at least one child, which represents a serious situation of discrimination and violence. .
Although, according to data from the National Institute of Statistic and Geographythe birth rate at the national level has decreased, the same is not true in the case of adolescents.
In Mexico, many adolescent girls are becoming pregnant prematurely, raising children, getting married or in a union, most of them are from communities or rural areas of the country.
Due to this situation, a high percentage of girls and adolescents will not finish school, limiting their opportunities for development and economic empowerment by having to be cared for by others. Therefore, they will be more dependent and will face greater situations of vulnerability and exclusion.
According to data published by the aforementioned UN agency, teenage pregnancy is both a cause and a product of economic, ethnic, generational and gender inequalities.
The majority of adolescent mothers find themselves in a situation of exclusion and marginalization, and their sons or daughters have a high probability of continuing to be immersed in this dynamic, thus perpetuating the intergenerational transmission of poverty.
Education, an effective strategy to protect girls
Therefore, education is one of the most effective strategies to protect girls from teenage pregnancy and early marriage. The more years of education, the more likely women are to have fewer children and the greater opportunities to provide them with better living conditions.
Finally, the empowerment of women and the elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against girls are central to protecting the effective enjoyment of their human rights.
Another key day to raise awareness about girls’ empowerment is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.
For this reason, cases like Ashley’s cannot be let go, they are infinite stories, they are new stories that can be created. She, like many other girls, believes that there is still a lot of support from society and governments so that they can fully develop in science.
“A lot of support is needed for science and these projects, science is always present in us, it is important that it continues to be supported”, Ashley concluded with great emotion in her words.
