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This is an excerpt from MEGA February-March 2026 New Voices Feature
Kristine Atienza is a woman of historic firsts. After becoming the first Filipino analog astronaut in 2023, she recently became the first Filipino to train and certify for commercial suborbital spaceflight. A nutritionist-dietitian and humanitarian, she may quite possibly add “first Filipino in space” to her already celestial CV.
You would think this high-flying pioneer would be intimidating, but what’s striking about Kristine is how deeply she remains grounded. She is the first to tell you that she isn’t an outlier. In her eyes, she is simply an ordinary person pursuing extraordinary things—and that is exactly what makes her story so resonant.
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“There are times when I’d feel, ‘Who am I to do this?’” she admits. “But I hope people feel that if I’m able to do this, kaya din nila (they can too). If you want it enough, you will find a way. My story is about finding that way when the main road is blocked.”
REJECTION AS REDIRECTION
Kristine’s love for the stars began with a colorful children’s encyclopedia she hyper-fixated on as a preschooler. Her parents nurtured this spark, talking to her about meteor showers and eclipses. At 17, however, that lifelong dream hit a sudden, demoralizing dead end.
Growing up as a “science girl” in Bataan, she was always at the top of her class. She entered the University of the Philippines Diliman to study physics, but a failed math exam combined with the culture shock of Manila shattered her confidence. “I felt like I was giving up my whole life,” Kristine recalls of her decision to shift to Nutrition. “Astronomy was my whole personality. When that plan broke, I felt like my past and my future vanished.”
Refusing to let her passion flicker out, she remained a fixture in the space community, volunteering for the UP Astronomical Society and maintaining ties to a global network of researchers. It was this refusal to leave the room that eventually led her to a niche that bridged her two worlds: space nutrition.
This specialized path led Kristine to the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) mission on Mauna Loa, a Mars simulation designed to study the rigors of deep-space isolation. Serving as the crew’s nutritionist, she lived in habitat confinement on the volcanic landscape, making history as the first Filipina analog astronaut.
“Honestly, if not for nutrition, I wouldn’t have become an analog astronaut,” she shares. “What I felt like was my failure before became an advantage for me.”
BUILDING THE ROADMAP
But with limited opportunities for space nutrition in the Philippines, Kristine was forced to navigate a rarefied field without a guide. Accustomed to building her own roadmap, she bridged the gap between where she is and where she wants to be through a relentless commitment to showing up—even in rooms where she felt she didn’t belong.
This mindset propelled her to leading the space nutrition field in the Philippines.
After founding the Space Nutrition Network, which connects specialists—including those from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). She is now collaborating with the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) to put a Filipino stamp on the global astronaut menu. Their “cosmic Asian cuisine” initiative seeks to bring underrepresented Asian flavors to the stars.
“Most space food is American, Russian, or Japanese,” Kristine notes. “But we have so much to offer. We are currently exploring recipes from across the region—even working on a Filipino edition of space food, like an ‘adobo in space’ project.”
Read more about Kristine Atienza’s mission for Filipinos to reach outer space in MEGA’s February-March 2026 issue now available on Readly, Magzter, Press Reader and Zinio.
Photographed by JERICK SANCHEZ. Art Direction by CLARE MAGNO. Sittings Editor STEF JUAN. Stylist QUAYN PEDROSO. Makeup KATHY ORAN. Hair MAT T LEDESMA. Photographer Assistant KARL RIMANDO. Shot on Location at PAGASA ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY
