Inspiring Video: Meet Ghanaian scientist, Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu who helped deploy a lander on Mars

Ghanaians far from home have touched many lives and contributed to the world of knowledge, technology, science, and innovation in diverse fields. One of such persons is Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu.

He is credited with helping to deploy for the first time a lander on the surface of Mars for the all-important exploration of this planet to advance the knowledge base of the world. 

The project is estimated to have cost $813.8 million with the single aim of helping dig deeper beneath Mars to help stage an important investigation into its genetic makeup. 

According to Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu while in Ghana and a child, he got a lot of inspiration to learn science and technology from the airplanes he saw taking off each time he got that opportunity. This inspired him to dream of the possibility of an autonomous aircraft those days. “I was fascinated by replacing human pilots with computers. I was very interested in that as a young kid.” He said. 

This propelled him to follow his childhood dream and today he is an inventor who is constantly challenging his field to invent, deploy as well as install landers automatically on other planets.

He happens to be the lead for the instrument deployment system at  NASA’s spacecraft that deployed and landed the lander safely on Mars.

The lander looks at the interior of Mars. The lander called Insight is expected to collect relevant data which will be analyzed by a team of experts to help us better understand how rocky planets such as the Earth and Mars were formed millions of years ago. 

Today in Ghana, he has decided to inspire many young minds that are obsessed with science and innovation with the help of the Ghana Robotics Academy Foundation established 29 years ago in 1991. Here science, technology, and innovation are made practical through the hands-on robotics workshops and competitions held in Ghana. The aim is simply to make science, technology, and innovation real and practical.

The Ghanaian scientist Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu who helped deploy a lander on Mars is an inspiration to us all and a challenge to the current crop of Mathematics, Science and IT teachers all levels to inspire confidence in children through effective teaching of these subjects instead of the usual fear they put in students making them avoid the subjects entirely. 

Ghanaian scientist Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu is an innovator who helped deploy a lander on the surface of Mars https://t.co/noN40R16I7 pic.twitter.com/R2cGgkIrHI

— CNN Africa (@CNNAfrica) May 25, 2020