Nandini Harinath

Nandini Harinath is an Indian space scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation who served as deputy operations director for Mangalyaan, India's maiden Mars Orbiter Mission. The spacecraft left Earth orbit on December 1, 2013 and was placed in Martian orbit on September 24, 2014, which made India the first country in Asia to reach Mars and the first to succeed on its very first attempt. Her career at ISRO has spanned more than twenty years and more than fourteen missions, and in recent years she has led the operations team overseeing Chandrayaan-3 and Aditya L1. The sari she wore on the day the spacecraft left Earth orbit was added to the collection of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and is shown in its Futures in Space gallery as a symbol of national pride in the Mars mission and of women in science.