Indian-origin NASA engineer Vandi Verma has recently driven the Perseverance rover on one of the craters of Mars and has tagged her experience as ‘Incredible'.
Verma drove the SUV-sized rover through the tenuous terrain of the crater believed to be the site of an ancient lake.
As the rover trundled on the surface of the Red Planet over 300 million kilometers away, Verma said it’s a rover driver’s paradise and when you put on the 3D glasses, you see so much more undulation in the terrain.
Vandi holds a Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. She is the chief engineer for robotics operations with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
She hails from Halwara in Punjab and has an army background. Her father was an Indian Air Force pilot.
According to various studies and findings, Jezero crater, which is Verma’s operational ground at present, was once a lake. It was around some billions of years ago when Mars had a wetter terrain than today.