Swati Mohan NASA: Indian-American Scientist Reflecting Nasa’s Diversity and Return of Global America Leads Mars Rover Landing | World news

WASHINGTON: Swati MohanThe voice was calm and steady as she led the NASA team – and the rest of the world – through Mars Rover Perseverance’s rendezvous with the red planet. As colleagues held their breath and watched, Mohan, wearing a bindi and speaking from behind a mask with a Rover badge, announced: “Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance is safe on the surface of Mars, ready to begin the search for the signs of a past life. ” Cheers, whoops and high-fives erupted in the control room at another small step for mankind.
Swati Mohan is one of more than a dozen scientists and engineers of Indian descent on NASA’s Mars exploration team, and is testament to the diversity of the US’s scientific and technological prowess that rests largely on its extensive immigration history.

Currently chief operations engineer of the Mars 2020 Guidance, Navigation, and Controls (GN&C, the “eyes and ears” of the spacecraft), Swati came to America at the age of one year with parents who had immigrated from India. Growing up in the Northern Virginia-Washington DC metro area, itself a tech hub, she wanted to “ find new and beautiful places in the universe ” according to her NASA biography after being blown away by the beautiful images of space she saw on the TV series “Star Trek” that she started watching when she was nine.

“Actually, I wanted to be a pediatrician until I was about 16. I was always interested in space, but I didn’t really know about the possibilities of turning that interest into a job. When I was 16, I took my first physics lessons. I was lucky enough to have a great teacher, and everything was so understandable and easy. Then I really considered engineering as a way to find space, ”she explains in her profile.
A Bachelor of Science in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University and her MS and PhD from MIT in Aeronautics / Astronautics before joining Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) where she has worked on multiple missions such as Cassini (mission to Saturn ). ) and GRAIL (a pair of spacecraft flown to the moon). She has been working on Mars 2020 since nearly the project began in 2013, including as head of the GNC operation at JPL in Pasadena, California.
‘I spend longer at Perseverance than at any school. I’ve been working on Perseverance longer than my youngest daughter is alive, “she told a local newspaper on Thursday.” It has just taken up so much of my life for so long. ”
Mohan is one of more than a dozen PIOs in the Mars mission mix that reflects the immense diversity of NASA. Her contribution was highlighted one day when the White House announced a sweeping immigration bill that, among other proposals, paves the way to citizenship of NASA. tens of thousands of skilled Indian professionals flow over visas for guest workers. Others involved in the mission at senior level include Vandi Verma, Chief Engineer of Robotics Operations and Usha Guduri, Head of Activity Planning and Sequencing subsystem,
According to urban legend, people of Indian descent make up about 35 percent of NASA’s workforce. While that hyperbolic figure is vastly different, anecdotal reports suggest that about 5-10 percent of NASA’s engineering personnel are of Indian descent, although the organization does not keep an ethnic or racial score.
But it does recognize the value of diversity. “Diversity is a hallmark of NASA – after all, we wouldn’t be the agency we are without,” said Clayton Turner, Nasa’s Langley Research Center’s first black director this week, adding, “People bring different perspectives and skills together. for the betterment of humanity is essential to our success. ”
That diversity was also reflected in the black bindi in which Swati Mohan appeared when she announced the landing, recalling a generation that recalled the “dotbuster” era, when Indian women were harassed and ridiculed for being there. one wore.

“I feel unreasonably happy that the NASA spokesman for the Perseverence rover’s Mars landing is an Indian woman with a bindi! I regularly wore bindi in India and initially continued to do so in the US. But random people stared / argued. sometimes asking. So I stopped. My mom said I didn’t care but I didn’t like unwanted attention. Today I decided to change that decision and delivered my lecture with one! “tweeted Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine.