NASA has landed a new robotic rover on Red Planet to directly study whether there was ever life on Mars. NASA successfully landed its new robotic rover on Mars, a mission to directly study if there was ever life on the planet.
$2.7 billion Robotic explorer named Perseverance is the third robotic visitor from Earth to reach the Mars in this month. NASA’s spacecraft did not go into orbit first. Instead it zipped along a direct path to the surface. The success gave cheerful moment among the scientists in California. Perseverance is the most advanced, sophisticated and expensive mobile laboratory sent to Mars. It is very much proud that Indian born scientist also gets equal credit in this success.
NASA’s latest mission to send a rover to Mars included Dr. Swati Mohan who was born in Karnataka. She is spearheaded the development of altitude control and the landing system for the rover. She was communicated with the teams associated with the mission on Mars touchdown. That made the control room with all cheers and high-fives broke out. Swati Mohan is one of the 12 scientists of Indian origin in NASA’s Mars exploration team. She is lead operations engineer of the Mars 2020 Guidance, Navigation and Controls (GN&C) which has key importance to spacecraft.
She is the key communicator between GN&C subsystem and
the rest of the project’s teams. The results of the Mars mission will likely
define the next couple of decades of Mars exploration. She is responsible for
scheduling the mission control staffing for GN&C and guiding the procedures
that uses in mission control room. Dr. Swati Mohan leaves India at the age of 1
year and grew up in Washington DC area. She studied Bachelor of Science Degree
in Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University. She has been associated with
Mars Mission since its inception 2013. Diversity is a hallmark of NASA. That also
reflected in the black bindi that Swati Mohan was seen in the mission control
room.
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