From Suriname to Space: Rohit Goeptar Shares His Journey to NASA

Rohit Goeptar was born into a poor family in Suriname, South America, the kind where both parents work three jobs and they still can only provide food and shelter for their family. At around age six, his family moved to California to start a new life. Only two years later, he moved back to South America with his father while his mother stayed in the United States and remarried. When he was 13, he became a U.S. citizen and he and his brothers returned to live with their mother in California. 

At 19, Goeptar joined the U.S. Marine Corps where he spent six years as a technical operator. During one deployment to the Philippines, Goeptar helped set up communication systems for individuals who needed to contact their loved ones after a typhoon ripped through entire towns.  

“I was lost, the Marine Corps gave me an opportunity,” Goeptar recalled.  

While the Marines taught him useful skills, his life had not been the easiest. He lost not one, but two, fathers to suicide, and a short first marriage ended with him being unhoused on the streets of Kissimmee, Florida, for six months. But Goeptar eventually found his way.   

As with most underdog stories, there was another person in the shadows behind his rise to success.  

“Your brain works in mysterious ways,” his now wife told him a short while after they met. She then filled out college applications for him, and he eventually applied to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  

While raising three kids, going to school full-time pursuing a computer engineering and electrical engineering degree simultaneously, Goeptar got the call that changed his life. 

“In spring 2025, I was driving to pick my son up from school when a gentleman from Kennedy calls, telling me he’s seen my resume and do I have time for a quick interview,” Goeptar recounted. 

He pulled on the side of the road and took part in an impromptu job interview. 

Two weeks later, he had an in-person interview with others from Kennedy and two weeks after that, he had a contractor badge at America’s premier spaceport.  

After starting as an intern under the Expendable Launch Vehicle Integrated Support, or ELVIS, contract, then moving to part-time until he graduated from the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, then full-time at the beginning of 2026, Goeptar was one of the ELVIS contractors who applied and were picked up to become civil servants recently. 

Now an employee of NASA’s Launch Services Program, Goeptar works with electromagnetic interference, electromagnetic compatibility, and radio frequency. It is his job throughout the entirety of the mission to analyze and ensure avionic boxes or anything electrically powered doesn’t interfere with any other systems. He also ensures independent systems are compatible when brought together. And finally, he conducts model radio frequency link analysis for different rockets and science demonstrations payloads. These may belong to NASA or commercial partners, and he is responsible for ensuring uninterrupted communication with the ground. In his short time at Kennedy, Goeptar has worked on Sentinel-6B, JPSS-4 (Joint Polar Satellite System), and IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) missions.  

And as far as his wife’s assessment that his brain works differently, he proved that within a year at Kennedy when he noticed an analytical issue his team wasn’t tracking. Once a rocket launches, it does a pitch, yaw, and roll. The analysis the team had been conducting didn’t account for this movement, which meant it wasn’t as accurate as it could be. He presented his solution to the team lead, and it now enables NASA data and partner data to be much more in sync. 

“There is no greater feeling, being able to serve. It’s more than serving the public, it’s serving our country. It’s serving the future of our country,” Goeptar said with tears brimming in his eyes. “Being able to give back to that same government that gave me an opportunity to be where I’m at today. There’s no greater feeling than that.” 

Meanwhile, Goeptar’s 11-year-old takes most of the credit for his landing at the space center, a NASA enthusiast, his son believes he spoke it into existence. 

“One day he wants to become an astronaut,” Goeptar said with joy on his face. “And I told him I will guide him until the day that I die. Maybe my last mission could be the one my son flies on. I’m not going to stop until that day happens.” 

Rohit’s positive streak continues as he recently was accepted into electrical engineering master’s programs at both Johns Hopkins University, and UCF.  

Learn more about NASA’s missions online: 

https://www.nasa.gov