INDO-AMERICANS TAKING OVER COUNTRY: BIDEN
Indian Americans are “taking over the country”, said President Joe Biden lightheartedly on a congratulatory call with Nasa Mars mission’s Swati Mohan Thursday. Mohan, an Indian American who moved to the US with her parents as a one-year-old, was guidance and controls operations lead for the 2020 Mars mission.
WASHINGTON: Indian-Americans are “taking over the country”, said US President Joe Biden lightheartedly during a congratulatory call with the Nasa Mars mission’s Swati Mohan on Thursday.
Mohan, an Indian-American aerospace engineer who had moved to the US with her parents as a one-year-old, was the guidance and controls operations lead for the 2020 Mars mission. It was her voice that was heard around the world from mission control at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California in the final minutes as the Perseverance rover landed on Mars on February 18.
“Are you kidding me? What an honour this is,” Biden said when Mohan thanked him for the call. He added, “This is an incredible honour. And it’s amazing. Indian(s) - of descent Americans are taking over the country. You, my vice-president, my speech-writer Vinay - I tell you what.”
The references were to Nasa’s Mohan, US vice-president Kamala Harris, and the director of the White House speech-writing team, Vinay Reddy.
Biden then invited Mohan to speak. “My path actually started way back when I was a child, watching my first episode of Star Trek,” she said. “What really captured my attention was this really close-knit team who was working together, manipulating this technological marvel with the sole purpose of exploring space and understanding new things and seeking new life.”
She added, “Those last days and weeks leading up to landing day, it was pretty smooth, but we (in mission control) were all still really nervous and, frankly, terrified until we got through those final seven minutes. To be able to call ‘touchdown’ safely, to see those first images come back from Mars, to see the place where we have never been able to go to on Mars before and go there - reach there for the express purpose of seeking out new life just made it feel like I was living in a dream.”