The NASA rover has finally touched down at the Martian surface. However, the mission was successful because of the virtual spearhead of an Indian American Swati Mohan.
Swati Mohan Confirms Range Rover’s Landing
As per the reports, Swati Mohan cheered as she confirmed the Touchdown. She said that the NASA Range Rover, Perseverance had safely landed on Mars’ surface. It is now ready to begin to check the signs of past life on Mars. The landing was expected to be “very dangerous”. It was also nicknamed as “7 minutes of Terror”.
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NASA further took to Twitter to reveal that the Perseverance was in space at that time about 9000 miles from Mars. The tweet said that she was healthy and on track, before the range rover reached the surface. It further added that Swati Mohan was providing updates on Perseverance.
Who is Swati Mohan?
Swati Mohan has participated in several other key missions from NASA. These include Cassini (a mission to saturn) and GRAIL (to study the formation of the Moon). Mohan migrated to the United States of America from India when she was just nine years old and was heavily influenced by the movie Star Trek series.
She further holds a degree in Bachelor of Science in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University. She has also completed her masters and PhD from MIT in Aeronautics/Astronautics.
As per reports, Mohan wanted to be a pediatrician until she was 16 years old. But as a turn of events, she shifted her interests towards engineering in her first physics class and further pursued her interests in space exploration. Mohan has been a part of the Perseverance team ever since NASA started building it at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
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What is Perseverance?
Perseverance is the largest and the most advanced rover sent by NASA to Mars. It has finally reached the surface after a journey of 203 days and travelling 472 million kilometres. It is packed with advanced technology and was launched on July 30, 2020 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The aim is to bring back some Mars samples to the earth. NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said in a statement with the return of Perseverance, they’d be rewriting the books. Scientists are hoping that the sample will tell the stories of past biology on the planet. Perseverance will bring a sample of the delta and then some of the crater sample.
