FEBRUARY 22, 2021 - If you’ve been following the progress of the latest Mars rover, Perseverance, then you’ve probably heard the voice of Swati Mohan. She was the one you heard saying, “Touchdown confirmed.” Mohan is the Mars 2020 Guidance & Controls Operations Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the one narrating the rover’s descent to the Martian surface. And she credits at least some of her career inspiration to Star Trek.

A piece from the Cornell Chronicle, out of Cornell University in New York, Mohan’s alma mater, pointed to Mohan’s profile on NASA’s Mars Exploration program website. In her profile, she talks about her childhood, what she wanted to be when she grew up, and about what sparked her interest in space and science.

Mohan was just a year old when she emigrated from India to live in Northern Virginia. As a child, she wanted to be a pediatrician, until she discovered physics. “That was when I really considered engineering, as a way to pursue space,” she said.

It was years earlier that her interest in space was sparked. In her NASA profile, she said, “I remember watching my first episode of ‘Star Trek’ at the age of 9, and seeing the beautiful depictions of the regions of the universe that they were exploring. I remember thinking ‘I want to do that. I want to find new and beautiful places in the universe.’”

Nowadays, of course, she’s doing just that. In her role as Guidance, Navigation, and Controls Operations Lead, she manages the team that controls Perseverance’s “eyes and ears”. “During entry, descent, and landing on Mars,” she said, “GN&C determines the position of the spacecraft and commands the maneuvers to help it land safely.” And occasionally, Mohan gets to be the center of attention on the internet.

You can listen to Mohan’s voice in the latest video of Perseverance’s landing, on NASA’s YouTube page. It’s got three minutes of real-time footage of the rover landing on the Martian surface, and it hardly needs to be said that it’s a must-watch.