Remember When: She Landed a Rover on Mars. Then Told the World.
They launched it during a global pandemic, from a planet on fire, straight into the unknown — and it worked.
On July 30, 2020, NASA launched the Mars 2020 mission, sending the Perseverance rover hurtling toward the Red Planet aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral. It was the most ambitious Mars mission in human history. Behind it was something equally remarkable: one of the most diverse teams of scientists and engineers ever assembled for deep space exploration.
Women led critical science and engineering teams across the mission. Dr. Swati Mohan, an Indian American aerospace engineer, served as guidance and controls operations lead — the person whose calm, steady voice narrated landing confirmation to the world seven months later when Perseverance touched down. Jennifer Trosper, who has held leadership roles on every Mars rover mission over her 30-year career at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), led the engineering and management operations that kept the project on track through unprecedented global disruption. The team that built and flew this spacecraft reflected the country that funded it.
Perseverance carried Ingenuity — a small drone helicopter that completed the first powered aircraft flight on another planet — along with MOXIE, a groundbreaking device that successfully converted Martian atmosphere into breathable oxygen. Every system, every instrument, every line of code reflected years of federally funded scientific investment.
That investment is now under threat. Since 2025, the current administration has gutted NASA's science budget, eliminated research programs, and sidelined the kind of evidence-based expertise that made Perseverance possible.
What landed on Mars on February 18, 2021 was proof of what happens when science is funded, trusted, and led by people who reflect the full breadth of human talent. We cannot afford to forget what we are capable of — or who made it possible.
Leading Ladies Vote believes in that America. We are fighting to protect it.