SAT Writing and Language Practice Test 27

Questions 34-44 refer to the following information.

Seeing Her Way to Space

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On the strength of these achievements, Ochoa was selected for a NASA space mission in 1990. She became the first Hispanic female astronaut and the first in space in 1993. 34 Ochoa’s career at NASA has been every bit as illustrious as one would expect 35 of Hispanic descent: in 2013, she became the first person and the second woman to become director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

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Her second patent came in 1989, for a device that identifies the positional coordinates of objects with a new kind of precision, the kind required in military operations. The device, which 36 is characterized by their almost exact precision, uses the light and movement data to compute a specific spatial coefficient. The images produced by this device allow a mathematical precision that digital photography simply cannot provide. This invention has had popular applications as well, 37 including advances in face-recognition technology and airport-security scanning devices.

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Ellen Ochoa was born in Los Angeles, CA, in 1958. She did her primary schooling in La Mesa, and went on to get a bachelor’s degree in physics from San Diego State University. She earned a Ph.D. from Stanford in electrical engineering in 1981. 38 San Diego State University is a good school, but Stanford is a truly great research institution.

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Ochoa was first 39 revere for her research. Her most notable contribution is an optical system that can detect defects in a repeating pattern. Her first patent came in 1987 for a special camera that could correct in real time. 40 Unlike digital technology, which can operate neither quickly nor accurately enough in space missions, Ochoa’s optical analysis device uses laser light technology 41 instead of the traditional digital. The technology operates on electromagnetic wavelengths and produces instantaneous hologram images that are themselves incorporated into the final image output. This technology has enabled the further development of such optics technology as powerful telescopes that can see through electromagnetic aberrations to accurate images.

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Ochoa’s third patent was issued in 1990. 42 This technology enables a user to filter 43 two-dimensional images to focus on particular parts of that image with equal precision. An electronic system ranks the components of image, removing the “noise” that is irrelevant to the desired part of the image. This technology gives a three-dimensional perspective to two-dimensional objects, essentially offering users the ability to search an image with the same range of motion and perspective that they could use when analyzing a real-life object. This patent has had an obvious role in high-definition cameras, but it has also led to innovations in other areas, such as fingerprint-recognition software.