“space and mindfulness have the power to bring the world together.”

Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides

Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides is a Founder Astronaut at Virgin Galactic, mother of two, and wife to George T. Whitesides, former CEO of Virgin Galactic. She is the author of The New Right Stuff: Using Space to Bring out the Best in You. Loretta studied astrobiology at Stanford and Caltech, did research on plant life in the Canadian Arctic with NASA, dove to the bottom of the ocean with Titanic Director James Cameron, and has floated weightless hundreds of times as a Flight Director for Zero Gravity Corporation. She and her husband are the Co-Creators of Yuri's Night, the annual Worldwide Space Party celebrating the dual Russian and U.S. space anniversaries on April 12. Half Cuban and half El Salvadorian, she was happy to see her dad get to visit Cuba for the first time since he left at 18. She currently teaches leadership and personal development for the space community through her SpaceKind Training Program which evolved from the New Right Stuff training program she led at Virgin Galactic for five years.