5 of the Women Behind NASA’s Perseverance Rover

Over the past few days, the world watched with bated breath as NASA’s Perseverance Rover landed on Mars. The Rover will investigate the planet for signs of ancient life and collect rock and soil samples for further investigation back on Earth. This mission and the success it has already had is an early step towards NASA’s eventual goal of having human explorers on Mars.

While the mission rightfully garners attention and buzz on the news and on social media, the team behind it, specifically the women responsible, deserve their time in the spotlight. Without further ado, here are the women who made NASA’s Perseverance Rover landing possible:

1. Swati Mohan: Dr. Swati Mohan is an Indian-American woman, who immigrated to the United States with her parents when she was just a year old, and served as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the recent Perseverance Mars rover. She was in charge of guidance and control operations for the mission and spearheaded the creation of an attitude control and landing system for the rover. Because of her leadership role and dedication to the Perseverance mission for a number of years, Dr. Mohan had the distinct honor of announcing the safe landing of the rover to NASA’s control room and to anxious eyes all across the world. She monumentally declared, “Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance is safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the signs of past life.”
2. Moogega Cooper: Dr. Moogega Cooper is the Lead Planetary Protection Engineer for the Perseverance mission, and she was entrusted with ensuring that the spacecraft met the required cleanliness standards. While that may seem strange, the importance of the spacecraft being clean cannot be understated. As the mission seeks to find past life on Mars, including that of microbes, if the spacecraft has traces of microbes from Earth, it would hamper the rover’s observations on Mars.
3. Erisa (Hines) Stilley: Dr. Erisa Stilley is the Co-Lead on the Entry, Descent and Landing team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the Perseverance rover. She and her team have been working on ensuring the safe arrival of the rover on Mars’ surface for the past 8 years. Dr. Stilley has been vital in supporting the rover through development, testing, and operations preparations while simultaneously working on other projects, such as rover planner for Curiosity, the largest and most developed rover ever sent to Mars.
4. Katie Stack Morgan: Dr. Katie Stack Morgan is the Deputy Project Scientist for the Perseverance rover. Having been part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Science Team for 9 years, her knowledge of Mars’ sedimentary rock record as well as of its planetary surface is unparalleled. This made her a vital member of the project as she will be using data collected by the rover to comprehend the gradual changes in ancient surface processes and identify evidence of ancient microbes having existed on Mars.
5. Mallory Lefland: Dr. Mallory Lefland is an Entry, Descent and Landing Engineer for the Perseverance Rover mission. She has been involved with this mission for 7 years and initially worked on interdisciplinary projects, such as data management and thermal sequencing, before joining the Entry, Descent and Landing team. Her work has been focused on the timeline of the rover’s descent, namely working to account for every possible scenario in the final 6 minutes before the rover touches down on Mars.

While the aforementioned women have been invaluable in the rover’s success so far, there were thousands of other talented and driven women, who all contributed to making this mission a reality and deserve the same respect and admiration as these five women.