Women in Science
The Indian-American Woman Who Announced the NASA-led Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover’s Nail-biting Touchdown.- Dr. Swati Mohan
Story of one inspirational woman crushing her one aspirational goal
Starwars was her favorite TV show as a kid, and science, her favorite subject. Her tech-savvy parents immigrated to the USA when she was one year old. Meet Dr. Swati Mohan, an Indian-American who, as NASA’s voice announced, “Touchdown confirmed,” with the video that confirmed the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover’s touchdown on February 18th, 2021. Her announcement was received with thunderous applause from not just everyone present in the control room but the entire world, as NASA broke the news online at the same time.
Dr. Mohan is currently the Mars 2020 Guidance & Controls (GN&C) Operations Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. She has worked on the project since the inception of this project in 2013. She said it took her a few minutes to realize what they had just accomplished as she quoted in relief — “Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the signs of past life.” You can also hear her colleague Alen Chen (the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) Lead for the Mars 2020 project.) confirms “We’re safe on Mars,” which is almost inaudible amidst all the jubilant cheering that ensued.
“Touchdown confirmed, “Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the signs of past life.”- Dr. Swati Mohan, Guidance and Operations Lead. NASA.
Dr. Mohan says she was awestruck looking at the beautiful depictions of outer space shown in Star Wars. She was just 9 years old then, but she knew she wanted to do that. However, she decided to be a pediatrician because she was not sure of women’s opportunities in the space field. But in college, her Physics professor was so inspiring that she decided to go the engineering route. She graduated in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University and completed her MS and Ph.D. from MIT in Aeronautics/Astronautics in 2010. She has since worked for NASA on multiple missions, such as Cassini (mission to Saturn) and GRAIL (a pair of formation flown spacecraft to the Moon).
Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover took off to the Red Planet on July 30th, 2020
About her role, Dr. Mohan says she and her team in (GN&C), NASA monitor and orient the spacecraft correctly and maneuver it safely. During the crucial stages of the spacecraft’s entry, descent, and landing on the Martian surface, they command the spacecraft after determining its position to align it right, so it can smoothly touch down.
As she worked on this project from the start (when it was just on paper)to finish (successful landing), she could finally piece together everything she had learned from her past projects, which made this landing her big personal win. Dr. Mohan says several women from India and Asia proactively contributed to the NASA JPL project. She attributed the successful mission to all the highly diverse and talented people who strived to make this happen.
Here’s your front-row seat to my Mars landing. Watch how we did it. — NASA
NASA later even did a high-speed never-seen-before video version of the landing.
Landing during the Pandemic
Corona’s crisis led to Dr. Mohan and everyone else working on the project to work from home. She admits they had to refine the communication process to make it work seamlessly for them. Even at the landing time, only half of the team could be there at the control station. The celebration was low-key as they all resorted to Webex parties post safe landing of the rover on Mars.
Talking about the time she spent working on this project, she stated in an interview with Florida today that “I’ve been on Perseverance longer than I’ve been at any school. I’ve been on Perseverance longer than my younger daughter is alive. It’s just taken up such a large portion of my life for so long.”
Those crucial “Seven Minutes of Terror.”
Dr. Mohan recounts that her team goes through several intensive training on handling the landing scenarios, including simulations. On the day of the landing, she said, she stayed hyper-focused on the data and as the world hung to her commentary. NASA scientists had chosen a crater called Jezero to land the spacecraft, which scientists believe was once a river delta 3.5 billion years ago. They are hopeful that the interesting site where Perseverance landed could throw light on ancient bio-diversity on Mars if they ever existed.
Take a peek at Perseverance Rover’s final touchdown moments.
Perseverance is a unique rover in many ways because of the sample cashing system that can bring in rock and soil from different geological locations on Mars at a later stage. It also has a miniature helicopter that will detach itself from the rover and try to do a Wright Brother moment on Mars. This landing holds the key to determine if life ever existed on Mars (with the new technological instruments) and answer questions on how humans evolved. And finally, answer the Big Question — Is life on Mars possible?. It’s time for us women to feel an extra bit of pride because not many women are part of such endeavors — yet.
