Swati Mohan, an Indian-American scientist who exclaimed “Touchdown confirmed,” as the rover had survived a particularly tricky plunge through the Martian atmosphere. It was Swati Mohan who led the guidance, navigation and control operations which are also to be considered metaphorically, the eyes and ears of the spacecraft of the Mars 2020 mission.
Swati Mohan was only a year old when she migrated to the US, she was raised in Northern Virginia and Washington DC metro area; she then completed her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and her Masters in Science and PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Aeronautics/Astronautics.
Her interest in space was intensified after watching the TV show Star Trek when she was only nine.
She once told NASA, “Seeing the beautiful depictions of the new regions of the universe that they were exploring. I remember thinking ‘I want to do that. I want to find new and beautiful places in the universe.’ The vastness of space holds so much knowledge that we have only begun to learn,”
She further took the first step into the world of space after she took her first physics class; she explains, “I was lucky enough to have a great teacher, and everything was so understandable and easy. That was when I really considered engineering, as a way to pursue space,”
She explicitly spoke about her emotions during the touchdown moment, “As the team’s operations lead, I am the primary point of communication between the GN&C subsystem and the rest of the project. I am responsible for the training of the GN&C team, scheduling the mission control staffing for GN&C, as well as the policies/procedures the GN&C uses in the mission control room,”
"@NASAPersevere is still in space right now, about 9,000 miles from Mars. So far, she is healthy and on course."
Swati Mohan, @NASAJPL engineer on the rover's landing team, provides a status update on the #CountdownToMars: pic.twitter.com/g5lSdyPPkW
— NASA (@NASA) February 18, 2021
