Meet Vaneeza Rupani, Indian-origin Girl To Name NASA's First Mars Helicopter

Meet Vaneeza Rupani, Indian-origin girl to name NASA's First Mars Helicopter. Rupani, who hails from Northport, Alabama, earned the honour to choose a moniker for the helicopter on the basis of her essay submitted for NASA's "Name the Rover" contest. She picked in the honour in 2020, becoming world-famous for this.

The then 17-year-old suggestion to officially name the helicopter as Ingenuity was selected for the first aircraft to attempt powered flight on another planet.

The chopper started from Earth with NASA’s Mars 2020 rover Perseverance on July 30, beginning a nearly seven-month journey to the Red Planet.

Here's what we know about Vaneeza Rupani:

-The young girl initially found out about the contest while reading headlines on the NASA website and decided to participate.

-Vaneeza Rupani was selected among 28,000 essays submitted by K-12 students from every US state and territory.

-In an interview published by NASA, Rupani elaborated on the reason behind choosing the name Ingenuity. She asserted that the challenges faced in design a helicopter that is capable of flight on another planet can be overpowered only "with collaboration and creativity". "It takes the ingenuity of an incredible group of people to create something with so many complex challenges,” she explained.

-She had an interest in space science since her Montessori years.

-According to her mother, Space and the science of engineering that answers have always fascinated Vaneeza. In fact, she and her dad would pretend they were in a spaceship on their way to school every day.

-She witnessed the launch of the Perseverance Mars rover, named by Alex Mather, a 7th-grade student from Virginia, on the roof of an engineering building at Kennedy Space Center.