Mother of an astronaut of Salvadoran origin wants her son to inspire children and young people

Less than a month before Frank Rubio takes off for a space station where he will spend six months, his mother, Myrna Argueta, prepares the moment so that in El Salvador, the astronaut’s country of origin, her son’s departure will serve as motivation for children and Salvadoran youth.

“There is very little left (for takeoff) and I want to meet with students from various schools so that together we can see on television the takeoff of the ship where my son will depart along with other astronauts,” he said in an exclusive interview with the Voice of America.

The astronaut who will participate in the next NASA mission was born in Los Angeles, United States, but his first six years he lived in the country of his mother and grandmother, El Salvador, better known as “The little thumb of America”, due to its extension territory that does not exceed 22,000 square kilometers.

It was in the Central American country that Rubio grew up with his grandmother, who taught him to read and write from the age of three while his mother worked to provide him with the education that now takes him into space.

“My mother and I made a good team in my son’s growth,” says Myrna Argueta. “She was a teacher and she took him (Frank) to school from a young age. There she learned very well to read and write, while I was working”, she says.

From his first years of life, Rubio was clear that he wanted to be a doctor and he succeeded. He was practicing medicine for pilots when he received the call from NASA informing him that he had been accepted as an astronaut candidate.

“I was with him when he was notified. He had come to visit (to the United States) because I live permanently in El Salvador. He got a call, that call that he had been accepted at NASA was a great joy for everyone, ”explains the astronaut’s mother to the VOA.

Rubio, 46, left El Salvador when he was six. The civil war, which lasted twelve years in the 1980s, forced not only his mother but also thousands of Salvadorans to leave a country mired in poverty.

“… but we got ahead, despite all that. I was studying and working and my son understood that the only thing that was going to get both him and me forward was studying,” said Argueta, originally from La Unión, a department in eastern El Salvador.

Frank Rubio was selected by NASA to join the “Astronaut Candidate Class” in 2017. After completing two years of training, he was chosen for a mission assignment.

“I didn’t know that he was going to give us this surprise… (…) It’s that one of the mothers doesn’t want to hear much about it because, yes, it’s not a trip where he says ‘I’ll be right back, I’m going to San Miguel’. In the end I told him, ‘son, first God, everything will be fine,’” adds Argueta with a face that reveals constant astonishment.

Leaving El Salvador did not prevent Rubio from continuing his studies, on the contrary. He is a graduate of International Relations at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He also has an MD from the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences.

Before attending medical school, he served as a helicopter pilot in which he flew more than 1,100 hours, including 600 combat hours during deployments to Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. On September 21 he travels into space with two other colleagues.

“People have sometimes told me ‘well, he has gotten there because since you are people with money…’ That is something that is not true, because the little we have has been work effort,” explains Argueta, who gives the credit to your son’s effort to achieve his successes.

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