Know about Dr Swati Mohan, who led NASA’s success on the most dangerous mission of Mars

New Delhi, 19 February 2021: On Thursday, the largest Perseverance rover ever sent by NASA successfully touched the surface of Mars after a 203-day journey, and an Indian-American scientist Dr Swati Mohan first confirmed the rover’s successful landing.

While the whole world was watching this historic landing, bindi-clad NASA engineer Dr Swati Mohan said, “Touchdown on Mars has been confirmed! Now it is ready to start looking for signs of life.”

Swati Mohan was co-ordinating with the GN &C subsystem and the entire project team.

Who is Dr Swati Mohan?

In addition to being the lead system engineer during the development process, she also looks after the team and schedules mission control staffing for GN&C. NASA scientist Dr Swati was only one year old when she moved to America from India. She spent most of her childhood in the Northern Virginia-Washington DC metro area.

She first saw ‘Star Trek’ at the age of 9, after which she was quite amazed by the beautiful depictions of new regions of the universe. She decided to find new and beautiful places in the universe during that time. She wanted to become a paediatrician by the age of 16.

Dr Mohan earned a bachelor’s degree in science in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Cornell University and completed an MS and PhD from MIT in Aeronautics / Astronautics.

Part of many vital missions

Although she has been a member of the Mars Rover Mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, Dr Mohan has also been a part of NASA’s various important missions. The Indian-American scientist has also worked on the Cassini (a mission to Saturn) and GRAIL (a pair of spacecraft flown to the moon) projects.