When Nasa landed its Mars rover Perseverance on the Martian surface, it was an Indian-American handling the controls and landing system. Swati Mohan spearheaded the attitude control and landing system of the Perseverance rover that navigated a particularly difficult touchdown.
Perseverance rover successfully touched down on the surface of Mars after surviving a blazing seven-minute plunge through the Martian atmosphere.
“Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance is safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the signs of past life,” exclaimed NASA engineer Dr Swati Mohan.
When the world watched the dramatic landing, in the control room, calm and composed bindi-clad Dr Mohan was communicating and coordinating between the GN&C subsystem and the rest of the project’s team.Apart from being the lead systems engineer during the development process, she also looks after the team and schedules the mission control staffing for GN&C.
Swati Mohan has been associated with the Perseverance Mars mission since its inception and has been working on the project for over seven years. She has also worked on Nasa’s Cassini mission to the Saturn.
Dr Mohan emigrated from India to America when she was just one-year-old. She spent most of her childhood in the Northern Virginia-Washington DC metro area. At the age of 9, after having watched ‘Star Trek’ for the first time, she was quite astounded by the beautiful depictions of the new regions of the universe that they were exploring. She had immediately realised that she wanted to do that and “find new and beautiful places in the universe.”
She also wanted to become a paediatrician until she was 16. It was, however, her first physics class and the “great teacher” she received, that she considered “engineering” as a way to pursue her interest in space exploration.
Dr Swati Mohan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University and completed her MS and PhD from MIT in Aeronautics/Astronautics. The largest, most advanced rover NASA has sent to another world touched down on Mars Thursday, after a 203-day journey traversing 293 million miles (472 million kilometers). The agency’s Perseverance rover landed on the Red Planet at 3:55 pm (Eastern US time) Thursday, bringing an end to the “seven minutes of terror” that saw a fiery atmospheric entry and parachute-assisted descent.
