Nepalese Scientist In NASA

Lujendra Ojha

Lujendra Ojha is probably the youngest scientist of Nepal who has been the crucial part of NASA’s project in which he and his teams discovered the evidence of water on Mars surface. Ojha has completed his Ph.D. at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. When he was just 21 years old, he began his research by finding out the possible saltwater flows on Mars.

Lujendra and his team concluded that there are water flows on the surface of Mars, and they confirmed it after Satellite by NASA, posted high-resolution pictures for research purposes. His team argues that conditioned Fluid water is available on the Mars surface, which still makes it geographically active.

At first, Ojha and James Wray, Professor at Georgia Tech, analyzed 200 images obtained by satellite, which includes pictures of 13 different sites of the Mars surface. However, their collective study failed to find any spectral signature tied to water or salts. However, most of the places where they studied, found clear and consistent texture features of ferric and ferrous minerals.

Evidently, Ojha was raised in Nepal with his roots in Mahadevsthan VDC, Doti from far-west Nepal so he was able to detect the chemical reaction of these Minerals through the high-resolution pictures.

Dr. Surendra Adhikari

Mr. Adhikari has tied up with NASA in various projects. He was a member of NASA’s Sea Level Change team which was selected in 2014, 2017, and 2020 to focus on advancing NASA sea-level science and forming new collaborations to tackle the interdisciplinary challenges in sea-level research.

https://www.transverseranges.com/articles/adhikari/

He was also the part of NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellow, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, during 2015 and 2016. Dr.Surendra Adhikari has an MSc, Engineering Geology from the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, and he has completed his BE, Agricultural Engineering, from Tribhuvan University, Nepal, in 2004. Some significant achievements of Dr. Surendra Adhikari.

NASA Early Career Public Achievement Medal (2019).
NASA Group Achievement Award for ISSM (2019).
JPL Outstanding Postdoctoral Research Award (2016).
NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowship (2014).
CSDMS Student Modeler Award, University of Colorado Boulder, USA (2012).
Outstanding Doctorate Student Presentation Award, University of Calgary, Canada (2010).
FGS Open Scholarship, University of Calgary, Canada (2009).
Dean’s Entrance Scholarship, University of Calgary, Canada (2008).
VLIR Scholarship, Free University of Brussels, Belgium (2005)

Abhas Maskey and Hariram Shrestha

Last but not least, Abhas Maskey and Hariram Shrestha. These two scientists are responsible for the lunch of Nepal’s first satellite NepaliSat-1. On 17 April 2019 Virginia United States, under the project of American space agency NASA, NepaliSat-1 was Lunched.

The research of Abhas Maskey and Hariram Shrestha made it possible for Nepal to have its own satellite on orbit. NepaliSat-1 is equipped with a camera and a magnetometer to collect information about Nepal’s topography.