Elisa Victoria Quintana is a scientist working in the field of astronomy and planetary science at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

[4] Her father Leroy Quintana, is a Chicano poet and her grandfather was a miner who appeared in blacklisted movie Salt of the Earth.

She attended Grossmont College and transferred to the University of California at San Diego where she obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics.

During her time as an undergraduate Quintana worked on astrodynamics the KidSat program (later renamed EarthKAM) with first US woman astronaut Sally Ride who was a professor in San Diego.

In 2014, she led the team that discovered Kepler-186f, an earth-sized exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone a red dwarf star,[7] which was published in the journal Science.