Natalia Larrea Brito is a Spanish national - the first to participate in the NASA Academy program, having been sponsored by the European Space Agency.  She is graduating from McGill University in Canada with a Masters in Aerospace Engineering.  She also holds a graduate degree in Telecommunications Engineering from Spain and a Diploma in Astronomy and Planetary Science from the Open University UK.  Her project with the 2013 NASA Ames Academy for Space Exploration, called "Mars-NeXTs: A Novel Approach for Mars Exploration Using a Network of Quadrotor Tailsitters," had aerial vehicles which perform focused investigations near or on the surface of Mars and then return to ground stations to download their data for transmission back to earth. In addition, she is multilingual—speaking her own native Spanish, but fluent in English, with an Intermediate level of French and basic level of German. Natalia's scholarship will help fund her attendance in the Space Studies program of the International Space University (ISU).

Natalia received SSPI's International Scholarship in 2014.

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