



UW grad Bobak Ferdowsi’s hair has gotten almost as much attention as the successful landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover (AP)

Few people knew about Bobak Ferdowsi before Sunday night’s

highly watched landing of NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover.

Now, the University of Washington grad is an overnight

star, thanks as much to his hair as his accomplishments.

The former Husky took center stage as the

mission reached its critical juncture. You couldn’t miss

the mohawk with maroon highlights and golden stars shaved

into his head, especially during the final moments when a

decade of work and $2.5 billion were on the line.

He describes his role as similar to that of Ed Harris in

Apollo 13. Throughout the evening pictures and videos of

him helping lead the mission went viral, and his Twitter

feed has now gone from just a few hundred followers to

over 18,000.

“I definitely didn’t expect to wake up seeing it all over

the Internet today,” Ferdowsi said of his image, speaking

to Ross and Burbank in an interview Monday morning.

He admitted there was plenty of pressure, then relief,

when Curiosity beamed back the first pictures from 352

million miles away.

“It’s just an incredible kind of nervousness followed by

this amazing moment of elation,” he said of the mission.

“The number of things that have to go right there for that

to work, and so many of them you only get one chance.”

Ferdowsi joined NASA after graduating from the University

of Washington nearly a decade ago. The outlandish hair is

a bit more recent. He’s had different looks for major

milestones throughout the lead up to Sunday night’s

landing.

“The mohawk more or less stays there the whole time. But

I thought I was kind of being subtle with this one. The

stars were like a little tribute, but the team actually

voted on this,” He said.



Activity lead Bobak Ferdowsi, center, wipes tears away after a successful landing inside the Spaceflight Operations Facility for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times-POOL)





It was a proud moment not only for Ferdowsi but the number

of other UW grads he works with, telling Ross and Burbank

they took a moment during the celebration to snap a group

picture.

Now that he’s an overnight sensation, are a slew of

science-minded female followers soon behind? Ferdowsi

said he’s got a girlfriend, although he’s barely had any

time to see her with everything going on.

“For me, I’m still just kind of getting over the whole ‘We

made it to Mars thing,'” Ferdowsi laughed.

And after what he described as getting “little more than a

nap,” he’s back on the job, and the task at hand.

“What we’re looking for with Curiosity is habitability. Do

the other things that life require to exist, are they

there on Mars and could Mars have hosted life?” he

said that’s a big thing they want to find out.

By JOSH KERNS, MyNorthwest.com Reporter.

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