MiMi Aung

Project manager of NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter team, leading it to the first powered, controlled flight on another planet (April 19, 2021)

MiMi Aung was born in Illinois but grew up largely in Myanmar and Malaysia, of Burmese heritage, before returning to the United States for her engineering education. She joined NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1990, building a long engineering career there before taking on her most historically significant role. As project manager of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter team, Aung led the overall program that turned an ambitious, high-risk technology demonstration into a real, flying spacecraft — managing the engineering, budget, schedule, and risk decisions across the years-long effort required to design a helicopter capable of operating in Mars's extremely thin atmosphere with full autonomy. On April 19, 2021, that leadership resulted in the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet — a landmark event she watched unfold from mission control as the confirmation data returned across Ingenuity's communication delay to Earth. Her role in this achievement was recognized with membership in the National Academy of Engineering and inclusion on Time magazine's Time 100 list of the world's most influential people in 2021 — international recognition for leading a genuinely unprecedented engineering program to success.

As project manager, Aung was responsible for the real engineering, schedule, and risk-management decisions across years of development that turned an extremely high-risk technology demonstration concept into an actual, successfully flying spacecraft.

Her role managing an engineering program through years of technical risk before a single real flight attempt is a genuine example of the program-management side of aerospace careers — a different skill set from the hands-on engineering also profiled in this app.

She was named to Time magazine's Time 100 list of the world's most influential people in 2021.She grew up largely in Myanmar and Malaysia before returning to the United States for her engineering career.

Wikipedia; U.S. Embassy Georgia profile

Photo: jpl nasa · Public domain · Source

• MiMi Aung