Indian girl’s Mars mission with European Space Agency

Hyderabad: I aspire to find what makes me genuinely happy and to do it,” says Bengaluru girl Anusha Mujumdar, 27, who is one of the 35 students globally honoured with the prestigious Zonta International Amelia Earhart Fellowship.

A third year PhD student in applied mathematics at the University of Exeter in the UK, Anusha will be playing an important role in European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Sample Return Mission slated for lift off in the 2020s. Talking about her first reaction to the news that she won the fellowship, Anusha shares, “I was very surprised and extremely happy. It is such an honour to be awarded this fellowship, alongside some very inspiring women in aerospace science and engineering from all over the world.”

Explaining in simple terms what is ESA’s Mars Sample Return Mission (MSR) and the significance of retrieving the Martian soil, Anusha says, “The Mars Sample Return mission has been proposed by various space agencies around the world, and has been the subject of significant research effort in the past few decades. The goal of MSR is to collect soil and rock samples and return them to Earth for scientific study. A typical mission scenario involves multiple spacecraft collaborating and communicating with each other. My current research problem deals specifically with spacecraft rendezvous during MSR, and the effect that uncertainty has on this process. In MSR, this rendezvous takes place in deep space, and so is a significantly complex problem. The MSR mission is important because it would revolutionise the way we study our neighbouring planet. We will no longer depend primarily on pictures or measurements taken by space vehicles and rovers. A rigorous analysis of Martian soil samples could reveal vital information about several aspects of the red planet. The most exciting of these is, of course, investigating the possibility of past or present life on Mars.”

As a student of Applied Mathematics, Anusha says the MSR mission is certainly an exciting problem to be involved in, for several reasons. “The first is the kind of challenges it poses. Several complicated engineering problems have arisen out of just this mission. Secondly, it will almost certainly dramatically alter our current understanding of our neighbour Mars and of the entire solar system.”

Revealing how she came to be associated with the project, Anusha says, “The research group I’m a part of (at the University of Exeter) works in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). This project is funded by ESA and is in collaboration with GMV and TASF. Dr Prathyush Menon, my PhD supervisor heads this project at Exeter. To be completely honest, my work is only a faint reflection of his brilliance!”

Anusha considers her achievement insignificant as compared to her father Prof. Pradeep Mujumdar’s achievements, but gives due credit to her family for encouraging her.

“I’m fortunate in that I have a very supportive family, they feel so proud and share even minor successes with everybody they know! My father is one of the most respected professors in his field, yet he is prouder of my (relatively insignificant) accomplishments than his substantial ones! Although my mother is not with us anymore (she passed on in 2007), I carry her love and positivity with me. I’m certain she would have been elated! She showed us (my younger sister and I) what a woman could do. She showed us what we could be, if we could only resist being put into a proverbial box.”

A doting older sister, a loving fiancée and surrounded by a great bunch of friends, Anusha is happy in her small world. “My greatest source of strength is my fiancé, who is a truly inspirational person, and gives me immense freedom and support.”

Of her sister she says, “Neha is the fiercest and most intelligent person I know, and I believe she is going to make a big difference in the world, she is currently studying media and development in London on the Felix scholarship. She has this knack for challenging me in a gentle and balanced way. I’m also lucky to have a wonderful circle of friends too many to name here, but I’m certain they’re reading this and that they know who they are.”

A gentle nudge is needed to make Anusha talk about herself and share what interests her. “I love cooking for my friends, writing, and spending time with pets. I was briefly involved in theatre, and it brought me tremendous fulfilment and a great creative outlet. I hope to get back to it someday. I also enjoy running and sports when I can.”

Even though she’s involved in ESA’s activities, Anusha is proud of India’s progress in space research. She says, “India’s space program is without a doubt one of the most impressive in the world by any measure. I have not had an opportunity to be directly involved in any aspect of the Indian space program. As an Indian citizen I am simply in awe of all its accomplishments, particularly recently with Mangalyaan. Spacecraft systems have always fascinated me, but my real love will always be mathematics.”

In fact, my undergraduate degree was in Electrical Engineering! I moved to Aerospace Engineering as a research assistant in IISc, Bengaluru. The primary connecting thread has been maths.” She counts Elon Musk, Nikola Tesla and Amelia Earhart among her role models.