In another proud moment, on February 18, 2021, NASA successfully landed its Perseverance Rover on the surface of Mars. The excitement was the way the Rover landed on the planet as expected, and the high resolution was added during the recording. his landing. With an ever-transforming image of NASA from the white man club to a more gender-inclusive workplace, the Mars 2020 mission is historic in more ways than one with quite a few female scientists and engineers on board. While dr. Swati Mohan from India came with the storm because he told the landing events of the mission control when the Perseverance Rover landed on Mars, another Indian gem of the team is the space robotics Vandana or ‘Vandi’ Verma.
The chief engineer for robotic operations for the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover, Verma was responsible for managing the Mars Rovers – Curiosity and Perseverance – using software including PLEXIL – an open-source programming language now used in many NASA automation technologies – that his collaboration was written and developed.
Born and bred in Punjab’s Halwara, Verma grew up as an army child as her father was a fighter pilot in the Indian Air Force. Undoubtedly for a person who grew up in Punjab, she once told the media that the first car she ever drove was a tractor. “I was probably already 11 years old then,” she says. Now she’s riding the Red Planet – Curiosity that landed on Mars in 2012 and now has perseverance.
Also read: Meet Swati Mohan, the Indian-American scientist behind NASA’s Rover Landing on Mars
A graduate of electrical engineering from Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh, Verma, holds a master’s degree in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the United States, followed by a Ph.D. in 2005. Her dissertation was entitled ‘Tractable Particle Filters for Robot Fault Diagnosis’.
Verma’s Ph.D. helped her get a job at NASA in 2007 and in 2008 she joined the Mars Rover team. “I do realize that I have one of the coolest works in the world,” she agrees. “I can honestly say that I get up every day and go to work on Mars.”
In addition to riding Mars, Verma also flies airplanes as she has bagged her student license. Her CMU research advisor, Reid Summons, allegedly regarded her as a dynamic, upbeat student. ‘Unlike those who do their research and not much else, she was very sociable. She was an active member of the computer women [science] society, flying planes and doing other outdoor activities on weekends, ”he says. In addition to being an avid pilot, the robotics enthusiast also visits open house opportunities in the laboratory and online as a scientific communicator to encourage children (and especially girls) to STEM careers.
(Edited by Amrita Ghosh)
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