Franklin Chang Diaz - A Costa Rican Role Model

Franklin Ramón Chang Diaz, Sc.D. is a Costa Rican-American mechanical engineer, physicist and former NASA astronaut. Dr. Chang Diaz became an American citizen in 1977. He is a veteran of seven Space Shuttle missions, making him the record holder as of 2014 for the most spaceflights (a record he shares with Jerry L. Ross). He was the third Latin American to go into space. Chang Diaz is a member of the NASA Astronaut Hall of Fame.

Franklin Chang Diaz was born in San José, Costa Rica on April 5, 1950 to a father of Chinese descent, Ramón Ángel Chang Morales (born 1919). His father was an oil worker who fled China during the Boxer Rebellion. His mother is Costa Rican, Maria Eugenia Diaz Romero (born 1927).

He graduated from Colegio de La Salle in San José in November 1967, and then moved to the United States to finish his high school education at Hartford Public High School in Connecticut, in 1969. He went on to attend the University of Connecticut, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering and joined the federal TRIO Student Support Services program in 1973. He then attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a Doctor of Science in applied plasma physics in 1977. For his graduate research at MIT, Chang Diaz worked in the field of fusion technology and plasma-based rocket propulsion.

Franklin Chang Diaz went on 7 missions to space between the years of 1986 and 2002. In the last mission he performed three spacewalks with Philippe Perrin as part of the construction of the International Space Station. He was also director of the Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center from 1993 to 2005. Chang Diaz retired from NASA in 2005.

After leaving NASA, Chang Diaz set up the Ad Astra Rocket Company, which became dedicated to the development of advanced plasma rocket propulsion technology. Years of research and development have produced the Variable Specific Impulse Magneto plasma Rocket (VASIMR), an electrical propulsion device for use in space. With a flexible mode of operation, the rocket can achieve very high exhaust speeds, and even has the theoretical capability to take a manned rocket to Mars in 39 days.

The Ad Astra Rocket Company Costa Rica (AARC CR) was formed in 2005. The facility is located approximately 10 km west of the city of Liberia, capital of the province of Guanacaste, on the campus of EARTH University. On December 13, 2006, the Costa Rican team of AARC generated its first plasma. After extensive testing of a 200 kW ground-test VASIMR unit, the company is aiming for a three-year flight test mission.