That's not his everyday hairdo.

NASA

The mohawk is the latest in a series of haircuts for Ferdowsi, who changes it up every time a big mission comes up on his team's schedule. "This time, [the mohawk] was voted on by my team," he told The Take Away. Other options included a reverse mohawk, and one write-in ballot requested that Federowsi shave in a reproduction of Gale Crater, Curiosity's landing site on Mars. "I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out."