‘Mohawk guy’ becomes the new face of NASA

NASA reached an historic milestone last week, successfully landing the rover Curiosity on the face of Mars.

Within hours, Curiosity was sending back pictures of the red planet, and making waves across the Internet.

But the Internet wasn’t just looking at pictures of Mars. Many had their eyes on NASA scientist Bobak Ferdowsi, the flight director at the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California. He’s also young, good looking and has a mohawk bespeckled with bleached-blonde stars, not the typical look of a rocket scientist.

The Internet quickly fell in love. Fans proposed to him on Twitter and posted dozens of photoshopped memes of his portrait across the web. Advocates have already adopted him as the poster boy for science, technology, engineering and math education.

“It’s really flattering in a sense,” Ferdowsi said. “I think peoples’ traditional thought of NASA is definitely a little different than what I look like, but our team is really a pretty good cross-section I would say. I’m maybe a little bit more out there, but it takes all types to make these Mars rovers work.”

Ferdowsi is a 32-year-old Oakland, Calif., native who holds a graduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to Reuters. His eccentric haircuts have become a good luck charm of sorts during his nine years at NASA. He often gets them for big missions or projects.

His co-workers voted in an online poll for his most recent hairstyle, the stars-and-stripes mohawk. Ferdowsi said it could’ve been worse.

“I believe there were some write ins for a reverse mohawk,” he said. 

Despite the attention, Ferdowsi said it wouldn’t distract him from the real mission. NASA designed the $2.5 billion Curiosity rover to look for life-friendly conditions on Mars. Ferdowski said it would begin its search after a month of preliminary system checks. 

“We’re looking for one step shy of life,” he said. “Do the indigents for life exist on Mars, or could Mars have ever supported life at one point or another? We’re basically looking for all the things we have on Earth that allow life to thrive.”

The rover’s landing was one of the most highly anticipated events for the space program in recent decades. The subsequent celebration of NASA scientists was streamed across the Internet and signaled a sign of life for the struggling agency.