Dr Swati Mohan grew up with dreams of exploring the universe, stemming from her love for sci-fi shows like ‘Star Trek’. On Thursday, that dream was realised in part with NASA’s Perseverance rover landing on the planet Mars to search for extraterrestrial life. 

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At the age of one, Mohan immigrated to the United States and has spent most of her childhood in the Northern Virginia-Washington DC metropolitan area. And having watched Commander Spock, Captain James T Kirk and others on her beloved ‘Star Trek’ since the age of nine, she wanted to “find new and beautiful places in the universe”, quoted in a report by news agency ANI. 

By the age of 16, Mohan’s aspirations in life changed, she wanted to become a paediatrician. However, in a physics class around that time, she found a “great teacher” who reignited her passion for the universe, eventually choosing to pursue engineering.

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Mohan graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the Cornell University and went on to complete her MS and PhD from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Aeronautics/Astronautics. 

“Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance is safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the signs of past life,” Mohan exclaimed at the historic moment the NASA rover hit the ground. 

One of the leading members of the NASA team of engineers co-ordinating the rover’s landing, Mohan was communicating between the GN&C (Guidance, Navigation and Control) subsystem and the rest of the team. Mohan was the lead systems engineer in the pre-launch stage and oversees the scheduling the mission control staffing for the GN&C. 

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While she has been a long-time member of the Perseverance Rover mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Mohan has also been an integral figure in various other missions.

She has worked on NASA’s mission to Saturn, Cassini, and GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) – a lunar mission, projects. 

NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars at 3:55 pm ET on Thursday and will explore the Jezero Crater, an ancient lake that existed 3.9 billion years ago, in search for microbial life. It is the space agency’s largest and most sophisticated rover and touched down on Mars after transversing through the void of space for 203 days, covering a distance of 293 million miles (472 million kilometres).