Stellar dreams

While most of us have nursed childhood dreams, a lucky few go on to make them come true. Like Hyderabad girl, Chandini Veeramachaneni Guntupalli, who is currently working in the RADAR Instrument Operations team of NASA’s most ambitious project — Cassini spacecraft, which made history recently, when after two decades in space and 13 years in orbit around Saturn, it was able to take the most detailed pictures of Saturn in the history of mankind.

Born in the US, Chandini’s parents moved back to Hyderabad when she was only three years old. She says that it was while she was studying in Nasr School that she developed a love for science and space. “As a kid, I used to watch Star Trek a lot and loved the idea of space exploration. The mystery of what could be out there in space got me interested in this field,” says Chandini, and adds, “I used to visit the Birla Planetarium and the Science Museum, which are great places for people who love science. I could stay there for hours and still not get bored. Every time I watched the show at the Planetarium, it transported me to a different world.”

Chandini went on to pursue her graduation in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Vignana Jyothi Institute of Engineering and Technology, Hyderabad. “All my teachers  were very encouraging. It was only during my Masters in Electrical Engineering at the University of Kansas that I was introduced to the wonderful world of RADAR. During my last year of the course, I even got the opportunity to fly to Greenland to study outlet glaciers,” she shares.

After her Masters, when Chandini first applied for a position at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the NASA division that carries out robotic space and Earth science missions, she wasn’t very confident of getting selected. But one of her professors guided her and was confident that Chandini would get the job. “My professor, Dr Prasad Gogineni, encouraged me a lot. If it weren’t for him and his wife’s support, I wouldn’t be at JPL today,” she opines.

Describing her journey in NASA as “fantastic”, Chandini says, “More than working, it’s about learning and finding out new things about space and the solar system that keeps me excited. I’ve been with NASA for 10 years now, and it feels amazing to work with talented people who are very smart, and yet so humble.”

Interestingly, NASA has about 37 per cent women while the new class of astronauts has 50 per cent women. “NASA has many women role models such as Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who served as a Mission Specialist on Space Shuttle Endeavour flight STS-118 and Kalpana Chawla. It is always inspiring to see people from humble backgrounds achieve phenomenal things,” says Chandini, who is undeterred by the long tiring hours of work at JPL. 

“Even though I never got to travel though space, my work on the Cassini mission brought me closer to my dream. I never thought I would be lucky enough to work at such a place,” she says, while admitting, “It gets hectic sometimes, most people here are very passionate about their work and don’t mind being busy. We feel the pain during stressful times, but ultimately, hard work is what leads to a successful mission.”

Describing her work, Chandini explains, “One of the goals of the Cassini mission is mapping the surface of Titan, the largest and most interesting moon of Saturn. My work as a RADAR Ops engineer, with the help of other engineers, is to generate the instrument execution block, which consists of a sequence of instructions executed by the RADAR flight computer during Titan observations.”

Chandini is also working on another NASA mission, in partnership with ISRO. “It’s called NISAR (NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar), and hasn’t been launched yet. Using advanced RADAR imaging, the satellite is designed to observe and take measurements of some of Earth’s most complex processes, including ecosystem disturbances, ice-sheet collapse, and natural hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides,” she shares.

Ask the 34-year-old engineer, who lives in Los Angeles with her husband, if she wants to work with ISRO full-time and she quips, “I am very excited about ISRO’s Mars Mission. But, I haven’t thought about moving back yet.”

In her free time, Chandini says that she loves playing board games. “I also enjoy Indian music, especially Ilayaraja’s compositions. No other music touches my soul as much as Indian music. I also love watching Indian movies and am eagerly waiting to watch Baahubali 2!” she says.

A true Hyderabadi at heart, Chandini says that she misses using Telugu for day-to-day conversations. “I rarely find Telugu speaking people at work and get very excited when I find one,” she reveals, adding, “I visit Hyderabad at least once every two years. Although the city has changed a lot, it is still warm and welcoming. The one thing that I miss the most when I am away is Hyderabadi Biryani.”