About
NASA Mohawk Guy is the nickname given to Bobak Ferdowsi, a NASA engineer and flight director of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity mission, who was seen sporting a stylish mohawk at the mission control center during the live coverage of the Mars landing of the Curiosity in August 2012.
Origin
At around 1:30 a.m. (ET) on August 6th, 2012, NASA’s first nuclear-powered Mars rover The Curiosity successfully made its landing on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater after more than nine months of journey since its launch in November 2011. Described as the most technologically advanced mission to Mars yet, the landing event was broadcast in real-time via television and livestream, garnering much attention from the news media as well as online communities and the tech news blogosphere.
While the tension remained high in NASA’s Mission Control center during the last minutes leading up to the safe landing of the Curiosity, one youthful staffer sporting a star-decorated mohawk cut captivated the attention of viewers at home.
Spread
The man wearing the mohawk was soon dubbed the “NASA Mohawk Guy” by the viewers, quickly leading to the creation of an image macro series on Memegenerator[10], various chatters about the man on Twitter[11] and a dedicated single topic blog on Tumblr called NASA Needs More Mohawks.[5] The man was later identified as Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer Bobak Ferdowsi, whose Twitter follower count[9] skyrocketed from 200 followers prior to the landing to nearly 20,000 followers in less than 12 hours after the broadcast. Meanwhile, Redditor submitted an image post of Ferdowsi’s screen capture from the livestream to the /r/ladyboner subreddit, where it gained more than 1,600 upvotes in less than 24 hours.
Notable Examples
Ferdowsi’s Response
Ferdowsi became aware of his memetic status soon after it was gained, and has since released several statements online about himself and his Mohawk.