The Indian-American scientist behind Mars rover

Indian American Swati Mohan virtually spearheaded the successful landing of the Perseverance rover near an ancient river delta in Jezero Crater on Mars to search for signs of ancient microscopic life. Mohan has been a member of the Perseverance Rover mission since its inception at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Pasadena: NASA's Perseverance rover streaked through the orange Martian sky and landed on the planet on February 18, accomplishing the riskiest step yet in an epic quest to bring back rocks that could answer whether life ever existed on Mars.

Ground controllers at the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, leapt to their feet and cheered when a voice in the control room announced, "touchdown confirmed."

The voice was of Swati Mohan, an Indian American scientist who is the Guidance & Controls Operations Lead for the Mars mission.

Mohan emigrated from India to the United States when she was a year old and was raised in Northern Virginia.

She studied Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University and then did her M.S. and PhD from MIT in Aeronautics/Astronautics.

She has worked on several missions such as Cassini (mission to Saturn) and GRAIL (a pair of formation flown spacecraft to the Moon).

Mohan has worked on Mars 2020 since almost the beginning of the project in 2013.

AP

Read:|Indian-American Swati Mohan spearheads NASA rover landing on Red Planet