CHENNAI: Encouraging the youth, especially women, to take up space technology as their career, Swati Mohan, Chief Engineer of Mars Launch System, NASA’s jet propulsion lab, interacted with college students at TN Science and Technology Centre (TNSTC) here on Tuesday.

The interaction was organised by the US Consulate General, Chennai together with TNSTC, where 200 women students from 9 city colleges participated.

During her presentation on Mars 2020: From Launch to Landing, Swati detailed her experience working on NASA’s Mars mission. “Diversity in our teams, especially women and under-represented minorities, is becoming increasingly important as we tackle the harder challenges in space exploration. Space ties between the US and India, partnership between NASA and ISRO, and co-engineer interests on critical and emerging technology are growing,” she added.

During her interaction with the media, Swati explained the findings on Planet Mars like the existence of water, carbon and other molecules, which help in sending subsequent rovers. Swati was mostly raised in the US, and 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. “She led the attitude control system of Mars 2020 during operations, and was also the lead systems engineer throughout development,” stated the Consulate press note.