American aerospace engineer and NASA scientist Swati Mohan, who is known for her leadership in the guidance, navigation, and control operations of NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, on Thursday said she is hopeful of seeing more collaboration between her organisation and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in future.
Speaking to IBNS and CtoI, the Indian-American scientist said: “I hope that there will be more possibilities and opportunities for NASA and ISRO to collaborate in future.”
She praised ISRO for the recent achievements in its space programmes, including the success of Chandrayaan 3.
India’s lunar mission, Chandrayaan 3, successfully soft-landed on the South Polar region of the Moon last year.
NISAR
She mentioned the NISAR (NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite project which is witnessing a collaboration between NASA and ISRO and is slated to be launched this year.
“It is a first-of-its-kind collaboration between the two organisations,” she said.
As per the official NISAR website, it is a joint Earth-observing mission between NASA and ISRO, with the goal to make global measurements of the causes and consequences of land surface changes using advanced radar imaging.
During her interaction with students at Kolkata’s iconic Birla Industrial & Technological Museum, while attending a session which was held in association with the United States Consulate General Kolkata, Swati Mohan said witnessing the success of NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance was a moment of satisfaction for her.
“I worked for eight years as the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) systems engineer. It was the longest period of my life when I worked with my complete focus on a single mission. Witnessing the moment when the mission was successful made me feel satisfied,” she said.
Mohan shared that she is a ‘fan’ of Star Trek TV series, as over 200 students present in the auditorium listened to her journey from an aspiring doctor to becoming an engineer.
She asked students to never ‘give up’ in their path of chasing their passion.
Swati Mohan went to the USA from India when she was a year old.
She has worked on multiple missions, such as Cassini (mission to Saturn) and GRAIL (a pair of formation-flown spacecraft to the Moon).
Gaganyaan
The aerospace engineer is visiting India at a time when Indian PM Narendra Modi recently revealed the names of the four pilots who are undergoing training for the nation’s first maiden human space flight mission ‘Gaganyaan’.
The astronaut-designates are Group Captain Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair, Group Captain Ajit Krishnan, Group Captain Angad Pratap and Wing Commander Shubhanshu Shukla.