Who is Dr Swati Mohan? NASA's Operations lead for the Perseverance Rover landing

The seven-months long journey from Earth to Mars for NASA's Perseverance Rover has finally reached its deciding moment. The Mars Rover is on its final few moments before it touches the soil of the Red Planet on Thursday, February 18, 2021. However, we can only imagine the pressure building up in NASA's control room, especially for the person leading the development of attitude control and the landing system of the Mars 2020 Rover, Dr Swati Mohan. But, who is Dr Mohan? Here is all you need to know about the Indian origin NASA Scientist.

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Who is Dr Swati Mohan?

While the world is waiting for the historic moment when the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover lands on the Red Planet, some of the genius mind behind this project are also sharing the limelight. One of which is Dr Swati Mohan who is the Mars 2020 Guidance, Navigation, and Controls (GN&C) Operations Lead. The Indian-American scientist has been dedicatedly leading the development of attitude control and the landing system for the rover. 

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Dr Mohan is the key person who has been continuously communicating and coordinating between the GN&C subsystem and the rest of the project’s team. Apart from being the lead systems engineer during the development process, she also looks after the team and schedules the mission control staffing for GN&C. 

NASA Scientist, Dr Swati Mohan emigrated from India to America when she was just one-year-old, as per NASA. She has spent most of her childhood in Northern Virginia-Washington DC metro area. The scientist holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University and completed her M.S. and PhD from MIT in Aeronautics/Astronautics. 

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While she has been a member of the Perseverance Rover mission since the beginning at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA., Dr Mohan has also been a part of various important missions from NASA. The Indian-American Scientist worked on projects Cassini (a mission to Saturn) and GRAIL (a pair of formation flown spacecraft to the Moon). Now, she is currently at the Lab waiting for the confirmation of the historic Mars landing.

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