President Obama made a public call to NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover control team at 11 a.m. ET to congratulate them on the successful landing of the rover on August 6. The call was livestreamed on NASA’s website.
During the call, President alluded to the surprise popularity of Mars Curioisity flight engineer Bobak Ferdowsi, who became famous around the Web and received numerous marriage propoals from women on Twitter after he and his mohawk hairstyle appeared in live video of the landing control room.
“I understand there’s a special mohawk guy that’s working on the mission. I in the past thought about getting a mohawk myself,” the President told NASA’s Curiosity team, but said he had been discouraged by First Lady Michelle Obama his team (corrected).
Obama further added that NASA had “come a long way from the white shirt, black glasses and pocket protector” image of NASA mission control scientists of the Cold War-era.
Correction: The original version of this post identified the rover’s landing date as April 6. We regret the error.
