LUCKNOW: Lucknow girl Priyanka Srivastava was one of the nine ‘desis’ who made NASA’s Perseverance Rover land successfully on Mars. She was associated with the mission in the capacity of a systems engineer. In her four-year long stint with Nasa she has worked on three earlier flight missions.
Her father, Sunil Srivastava, working with an export-oriented private company, said, “She had informed us already and sent to us a link on February 18 on which we watched till around 2.30 am the landing of the mission.”
Priyanka had her schooling done in Lucknow’s Mount Carmel till class 12th after which she went to Punjab University to pursue BTech in Electronics and Communication.
“She took Kalpana Chawla as her idol. The day she watched Chawla’s news on TV (about her going into space), she told her mother about her wish to be an astronaut.”
This, however, made her mother tell her that she should not say things for fun but pursue them diligently if she actually aspires to.
“My wife works with an insurance company. Despite our busy schedule we did not let the education of our girls get affected,” said the father of two, who has his younger daughter working as a medical professional abroad.
The family did let go on some comforts and pleasures to fund the education.
“It was still easy for us to support her education till BTech. She later went to University of Michigan and the first semester was difficult for us financially. Her mother would not spend money on even things like a ‘bindi’ ,” said Srivastava.
In her second semester, Priyanka got to check the copies of undergraduate students and that brought her some earning. In third semester, she did a project, which was appreciated by the university, and she was sent to Jerusalem where astronauts from all over had gathered. The then President Pranab Mukherjee had also arrived.
“She got to interact with her idol Sunita Williams and she told Williams that to her (Priyanka) she (Williams) was a mentor. She was like ‘Eklavya’ to Williams,” said Srivastava.
Priyanka did her internship with Denver branch of Nasa and then was selected to work in Nasa JPL, California, US.
“She last came to India in December 2019. Covid-19 pandemic last year kept her from coming to us,” said Srivastava.