Background on the Roboticist that guided Perserverance to Mars,
In yet another proud moment, NASA has successfully landed its Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars on February 18, 2021. Adding to the excitement was the way in which the rover landed on the planet as expected and the high-resolution image was taken during its landing. With an ever-transforming image of NASA from being the white man's club to a more gender-inclusive workplace, the Mars 2020 mission is historic in more ways than one with quite a few women scientists and engineers on board. While Indian-origin Dr. Swati Mohan took the internet by storm for narrating the landing events from inside mission control as the Perseverance rover landed on Mars, another Indian gem from the team is space roboticist Vandana or 'Vandi' Verma.
The Chief Engineer for Robotic Operations for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, Verma was responsible for driving the Mars rovers – Curiosity and Perseverance – using software including PLEXIL – an open-source programming language now used in many automation technologies of NASA – that she co-wrote and developed.
Open-source? Hooray!
Born and raised in Punjab's Halwara, Verma grew up as an army kid as her father was a fighter pilot in the Indian Air Force. Unarguably for a person who grew up in Punjab, she had once told the media that the first motorized vehicle she ever operated was a tractor. "I must've been 11 years old at the time," she says. Now she drives rovers on the Red Planet – Curiosity which landed on Mars in 2012 and now Perseverance.
An electrical engineering graduate from Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh, Verma went to gain a master's degree in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the United States, followed by a Ph.D. in 2005. Her thesis was entitled 'Tractable Particle Filters for Robot Fault Diagnosis'.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @08:27PM (1 child)
>> Verma grew up as an army kid as her father was a fighter pilot in the Indian Air Force.
Army, Air Force... it's all the same thing when you've eaten too much Chicken Vindaloo.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @09:17PM
For whatever it's worth: In many other (non-US) countries, "The Military" is typically referred to as "The Army". With Engineering, Air Force, Navy, etc. being branches of "The Army" -- so it's entirely reasonable for someone who didn't grow up in the US to say they were an "army kid" when their parent(s) were members of one or the other of "The Army's" branches.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @08:30PM (2 children)
-nomsg
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @09:56PM (1 child)
These amazing achievements brought to you by the Biden/Harris team. Thanks Biden and Harris, you are truly national treasures leading us back towards the amazing nation we strive to be! God Bless America!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @12:58AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @08:47PM (1 child)
Didn’t you watch Hidden Figures?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures [wikipedia.org]
And
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Astronaut_Group_8 [wikipedia.org]
All this at a time when Kirk couldn’t kiss Uhura
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyota_Uhura#Milestone [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @08:53PM
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @09:02PM (19 children)
Where's the news in this story?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @09:34PM (1 child)
White people are not smart enough to program Mars Rovers. When NASA tried that, they failed.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @09:39PM
Hyuk, hyuk.
Women of color invented the computer and internet you are posting on right now. They went to the moon, too.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @09:57PM (16 children)
My my how predictable you racist nutters are. Woman or non Judeo-Christian name in the story? Prepare for some racist misogyny.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @10:25PM (15 children)
Just tired of the NEVER ENDING saturation propaganda boosting women, non-native people, anyone who claims to be brown, and sexually confused people. Give it a rest; you're overexposed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @10:38PM (10 children)
Oh the humanity! Will they please stop congratulating people? It makes me SICK! /s
Didn't hear you complaining when women and minorities were being actively marginalized. No outrage when some white dude took credit for things he didn't do. Do you need a participation trophy? Would that help your widdle fee fees so you don't feel like you were beaten by a woman?
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 23 2021, @11:55PM (9 children)
Straw man. You've deliberately ignored the point the A/C was making. He's not saying "don't congratulate any people for their achievements", *and you know that*, he's saying "stop prefereably selecting non-straight-white-males to congratulate on their achievements, many of which were achievements not of an individual but of a typically diverse team anyway".
There were "One woman took a photo of a black hole" stories.
There's now a "One woman got Perseverance to Mars" story.
These are real datapoints. A/C considers them part of a trend.
What's next - "One woman kills all men with gain of function virus research"?
You can prove him wrong by showing that the reporting of such achievements is without any bias.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @12:56AM
Why stop? It's not like whatever you do is physically influenced by congratulations, is it?
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 24 2021, @01:04AM (6 children)
I think you made the point quite well.
When good stuff happens, it's good. We don't need to know race, nationality, culture, gender, sexual preferences, favorite toys as a child, least favorite flavor of ice cream, etc ad nauseum. Good stuff is good without all of that.
As a science article, there's nothing wrong with being female, Indian, a farmer's kid, or an army brat. There's nothing right about any of it, either. None of it is really relevant to the story, unless demonstrated otherwise. The bit about learning to drive a tractor on a farm? Maybe relevant. Not much, but maybe . . .
TFS and TFA are human interest stories, which we might expect to find in People magazine, rather than a nerd site. Wonder why nerd news includes People magazine style news these days? Oh, silly me - the SJWs have their fingers in everything!
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @01:24AM (5 children)
What's wrong with that?
Oh, right, the compulsion of spreading your snot all over your face was too strong. I'm not surprised at all.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 24 2021, @01:34AM (4 children)
About the same thing as lurking in a developer's channel, and asking new arrivals for ASL? Or, lurking in a kid's chat channel, as the case may be.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @01:47AM (3 children)
American Sign Language?
Argininosuccinate lyase?
Apache Software License?
Above sea level?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 24 2021, @02:05AM (2 children)
ASL is age, sex, location, you internet noob.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @02:25AM (1 child)
So do you suggest that nerd news sources should abstain from including news related to how nerddom influences the social or is influenced by the social, because "social" can only mean Age/Sex/Location for nerds?
Did I get this right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @04:01AM
Well, OK, you asked. Runaway is Old, male, and in southwestern Arkansas. According to him. Any other questions? (Oh, and he has not contributed anything to the advancement of humanity, not in science, or technology, or the arts.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @01:08AM
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @10:54PM
More coverage of threatenly intelligent women with electrical engineering degrees tomorrow!! Stay tuned!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @10:56PM
You must be Injun, eh?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @01:41AM
Why? You lot ENJOY the opportunity to be victims for once.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @02:16AM
I too am getting sick of sexually confused people who believe they're Boeing AH-64s. You can stick feathers up your vagina and call yourself a chicken, but that doesn't make you a chicken.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @10:40PM (4 children)
So PLEXIL, anyone every worked with it? Or does it only work on Mars? Open source, so there must be a repository somewhere, right?
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday February 23 2021, @11:13PM (3 children)
PLEXIL5 [github.com]
Core Flight System [github.com]
Free for all to use.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @11:53PM (1 child)
It's a trap: those URLs resolve to Mars!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @12:51AM
Those links lead to wherever you have money to build your ship for. For low budget, it can even be in your mom's basement.
(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Wednesday February 24 2021, @08:37AM
Looks a bit like Prolog and/or QML with its/their declarative bindings
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @11:35PM
No longer repressed by the white man!
Remember, if you're white, you're part of the problem.
Coca-Cola reminds you to try to Be Less White. [duckduckgo.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @02:51AM (1 child)
I don't know if she was granted H1-B visa, but if anyone should be given one, it's talents like her, not the sorts pushed by Inforsys/Tata/etc. to do commodity IT work, a third-rate work at that.
We should reserve most of H1-Bs for those highly talented foreigners trained at the top US schools.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @05:43AM
In this case I expect she's a citizen. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) generally makes it impossible to hire foreigners for positions involving potential defense related technologies. Same reason e.g. SpaceX cannot hire non-citizen engineers. And her full name, omitted in the article for reasons, is Vandi Verma Tompkins.
Though even that aside, there's a simple goal I think we should seek to abide. Companies should simply hire in a race-blind, sex-blind, way. Hire whoever is, on capability alone, the best person for the job. Whoever and wherever you happen to hire from. If you start hiring too many foreigners then you may need to engage in protectionism so as not to destroy your own labor market (a situation many developing countries that "open up" find themselves in), but I think we're far from that scenario. The problem we face now a days is companies intentionally not hiring the best people, instead giving a large weighting to race and sex. Interestingly enough this is why we passed the Civil Rights Act to begin with. It's like we've regressed and come full circle back to where we began.
In this case? She is absolutely qualified for the role, not even based in terms of results - but also based on her raw qualifications. But was she the *most* qualified for the position? Or was race/sex the deciding factor in who was chosen for the position/promotion? The answer to that question determines whether she was the right hire or not.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @03:19AM (1 child)
What happened to Wanda the Waitress?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @04:15AM
It's Wanda Vision, now. You might be in trouble, if you disrespect the Wanda.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @05:12AM