The name pays homage to Mary Golda Ross, member of the Cherokee Nation, and  the first female Native American aerospace engineer. A lifelong advocate for women and Native people in engineering, she was a charter member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Women Engineers and was active in the American Indian Science and Engineering Society. Ross was instrumental in the creation of and is featured in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and was featured on the Native American one-dollar coin more than a decade following her passing.