Science, in Deepana Gandhi’s rural Ooty school, may have whetted her appetite for the great unknown, but it gave her no inkling of where it would lead her.
The 26-year-old, is today a member of Team Indus, the only team from India to have been shortlisted among 16 global teams for the $30 million Google Lunar XPrize competition, the race to land a privately-financed robotic craft on the Moon by December 2017.
Gandhi also happens to be the centerpiece of a documentary series that traces the competing teams’ backstories.
Titled Moon Shot, the series is produced by JJ Abrams, the co-creator of the TV series Lost and director of last year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
“India’s changing. What I have been through is proof of it,” says Gandhi in the documentary, “Now there are women who are doing well in science and space studies. Soon, there will be an equal number of men and women (in these fields).”
Gandhi is part of the flight dynamics group at the Bengaluru-based Team Indus, responsible for controlling the spacecraft from the point it gets separated from the launch vehicle, till the touchdown on the moon.
Abrams’ documentary, directed by Oscar-nominated Orlando von Einsiedel, traces Gandhi’s story from her school days in Ooty to her present-day moon mission. She was fascinated with maths from a young age. “Maths mixed with science is beautiful,” she says, as the film shows her teaching children in a small-town school about space.
Gandhi was among those from Team Indus who travelled to the US to be part of the launch of the documentary series. “She’s incredible. When an American journalist asked her a technical question, she said, “Give me a whiteboard, I’ll explain it to you’,” says Sheelika Ravishankar, who leads Team Indus’ outreach and people programmes.
Gandhi’s inspiration was Kalpana Chawla, the Indo-American astronaut who became the first woman of Indian origin in space.
She went on to do her MTech at PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, following it with an internship at ISRO. “People used to say you are a girl, you can sit at home and relax,” she says. But her family, her father in particular, supported her. “My dad always said a girl can do what a boy can. That kept me tryingAt last, I got the opportunity to prove myself,” she says about her stint with Team Indus.
Founded by IIT Delhi alumnus Rahul Narayan, Team Indus started out as the inexperienced and under-resourced underdog in the competition, but is now a frontrunner.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Bangalore / TNN / April 24th, 2016