Yasir Tufail, a Pakistani NASA engineer, has made Pakistan proud as he worked on a project that has transformed humanity’s view of the cosmos.
The James Webb Space Telescope, which was launched in December 2021, now provides the deepest-ever view of the early universe. It was able to discover a whole bunch of galaxies that formed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
From a small village in Gujrat to NASA, his story feels straight out of a movie.
Talking to Arab News, he said, “After eight years, I was actually working on Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) at NASA”, referring to a Bollywood film Swades in which Shah Rukh Khan was also a Project Manager for GPM.
“The coincidence made me feel like life was imitating art”, he added.
Pakistani NASA engineer Yasir Tufail’s life in Pakistan
He talked to the news outlet about his childhood in Gujrat, Pakistan, where he studied until the ninth grade. After that, he moved to the US in 2001.
Tufail went on to study astronautical engineering at the Capitol Technology University in Maryland.
Afterwards, he got a job at NASA. Over seven years, Tufail held multiple engineering roles, integrating and testing instruments to ensure the observatory’s readiness for space, but his biggest project was the James Webb Space Telescope.
He recently visited his school in Gujrat after 24 years.
His younger brother also works at NASA as a quality assurance engineer on the Dragonfly mission, which will explore Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.
According to reports, it is said to be launched in July 2028 and is planned to arrive in 2034.
Even after achieving so much, Yasir also hopes to go to space. He said,”I still want to be an astronaut. You never know, maybe one day I will get to go to space.”
