Meet Dr Swati Mohan, Indian-origin Scientist Who is in Charge of NASA Perseverance Rover

As per updates from NASA, Dr Swati Mohan had migrated from India to the United States when she was just 1-year-old.

New Delhi: Just after a few hours, the world is going to witness the historic landing of NASA’s Perseverance Rover that will touch down Mars’s Jezero crater later tonight. As per updates, the exact date and time of touching down will be February 19, 2:25 AM IST (Indian Standard Time).

You can watch it Live also when NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance will land on the Red Planet surface. Launched in July 2020, Perseverance is the latest mission commissioned to assess how habitable Mars was in the ancient past. Issuing a statement, the NASA has said that the spacecraft is healthy and on target to touch down in Jezero Crater on February 19.

Notably, the Perseverance Rover was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida on July 30, 2020 and it will be making its landing on an ancient river delta in a lake that once filled Jezero Crater.

Once it lands, it will be a thrilling event for all the engineers and scientists involved in this entire project. And among them, the excitement would be particularly high for a specific Indian scientist Dr Swati Mohan. Taking to Twitter, Dr Swati Mohan had also tweeted, “10 days left!! #CountdownToMars”

10 days left!! #CountdownToMars pic.twitter.com/m4J8ZN5if2

— Swati Mohan (@DrSwatiMohan) February 8, 2021

Who is Dr Swati Mohan?

Dr Swati Mohan is an Indian-American scientist who is the Mars 2020 Guidance, Navigation, and Controls (GN&C) Operations Lead. She has led the attitude control system of Mars 2020 during operations. Apart from this, she was the lead systems engineer throughout the development. Moreover, she is the key communicator between the GN&C subsystem and the rest of the project’s team.

More importantly, Dr Swati Mohan looks after the team, scheduled the mission control staffing for GN&C, and is in charge of various the policies and procedures the GN&C uses in the mission control room.

As per updates from NASA, Dr Swati Mohan had emigrated from India to the United States when she was just 1 year old. She was raised in Northern Virginia-Washington DC metro area. She later completed her B.S from Cornell University in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, and received her M.S. and Ph.D from MIT in Aeronautics/Astronautics.

Apart from this project, Dr Swati Mohan has worked on multiple missions such as Cassini (mission to Saturn) and GRAIL (a pair of formation flown spacecraft to the Moon). She has worked on Mars 2020 since almost the beginning of the project in 2013 and is currently working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.