SHE IS A NASA scientist and a social media influencer. A PhD in aerospace engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Akshata Krishnamurthy was the only woman in her mechanical engineering class at RV College of Engineering in Bengaluru. Now, she is one of a handful of Indian citizens to operate NASA’s Mars Rover. “One of the biggest turning points of my career was getting into MIT for Ph.D. where I had the opportunity to work with the best experts,” says Krishnamurthy. She is currently involved in three big projects at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) —as mission science phase lead for NASA and ISRO’s first hardware collaboration, the $1.2-billion NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) Mission, as robotic operations systems engineer on Mars Perseverance Rover, and as principal investigator on a technology collaboration between JPL and MIT. “These collaborations give me motivation to think big, not conform to the mould and at the same time do something I am passionate about,” she says. Krishnamurthy says the NISAR project will send the largest radar instrument ever launched to space. It will enable mapping the Earth’s surface with an “unprecedented resolution” of less than 10 cms. — Manoj Sharma