Nandini Harinath, Deputy Operations Director, Mars Orbiter Mission:

Nandini fell in love with science when she watched Star Trek on TV. “My mother is a maths teacher and my father is an engineer with a great liking for physics and as a family, we were all so fond of Star Trek and science fiction and we would sit together and watch it on TV.”Of course, at the time, she never thought of becoming a space scientist and for her, ISRO “just happened”. “It was the first job I applied for and I got through. It’s been 20 years now and there’s been no looking back.”

She worked for 10 hours a day and as the mission neared 12-14 hours and there were times she never went back home. “I want to be grounded to earth. It’s important to remain so, to bring out the best in a person,” she said when asked if she was ‘the woman from Mars’.