‘Lady with Bindi’, Twitter was dominated by the trend when NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover successfully landed on the Red Planet on Friday (February 19).
Swati Mohan, the lady with bindi was the first to confirm that the rover had successfully landed on the Martian surface. “Touchdown confirmed,” said operations lead Dr Swati at around 3:55 PM Eastern Time (2055 GMT).
Meet Swati Mohan, the Indian-American NASA scientist
Born in India, Nasa scientist Swati Mohan had moved to America when she was just a year old. She spent her childhood in the Northern Virginia-Washington DC metro area.
Swati has played a critical role in NASA’s step towards exploration of life on the red planet.
According to a report in the Quint, Swati speaks Kannada and is a practising Hindu at home. She lives in California with her husband and two children.
After working on several Nasa projects, Swati Mohan spearheaded one of its most ambitious missions to bring back rocks from Mars to find signs of ancient life on the Red Planet.
A PhD from MIT in Aeronautics and Astronautics, Swati was the guidance and controlled operations lead for NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance mission.
NASA released a video of this moment which shows Dr Swati wearing a small bindi on her forehead. After the picture went viral on Twitter, several users lauded Dr Swati, calling her ‘lady with the bindi’.
Watch the video here:
The parachute has been deployed! @NASAPersevere is on her way to complete her #CountdownToMars: pic.twitter.com/i29Wb4rYlo
— NASA (@NASA) February 18, 2021
Lady With Bindi:
– Love how my Twitter feed loves space wins
– Striking how much more diverse NASA is than the yrs of white-guys-in-a-certain-age-group
– That’s Dr. Swati Mohan, sporting a bindi no less – esp resonant cuz memories still linger of racist/anti-immigrant “dotbusters”#Perseverance pic.twitter.com/wo3BRwHJ8w— Tanvi Madan (@tanvi_madan) February 18, 2021
“Touchdown confirmed” announced @DrSwatiMohan, ?? origin GN&C operations lead as @NASA’s #Perseverance landed inside a Mars crater.
No more the Hidden Figure in Space , ‘Lady with the Bindi’ Dr Swati has made ?? proud & inspired women across ? to reach for ✨ ? & Mars! pic.twitter.com/AFZYZzqyrA
— Lakshmi M Puri (@lakshmiunwomen) February 19, 2021
listen.
i wore a bindi through primary school and got bullied, physically bullied, for it. this is doing all kinds of things to me. ?
swati mohan in mission control, thank you. #NASAPerseverance— Anuradha Damale (@anulikesstars) February 18, 2021