Nacer Chahat is an engineer for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. At 37, he has just received an award from American President Joe Biden. A consecration for someone who grew up in Agen.
“Sorry I’m late, I met with Space
He grew up in Lot-et-Garonne and is one of the 400 winners to have received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) on January 14th by Joe Biden, former President of the United States. It is the highest honor given by the U.S. government to scientists and engineers early in their careers.
“In the last four years, only ten people have been elected by NASA,” says Nacer Chahat. who had already received the IEEE Fellow Award in 2021 for his contribution to CubeSat and spacecraft antennas for interplanetary missions. A consecration for someone who never imagined “one day working for NASA.”
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After attending the Théophile de Viau College in Passage-d’Agen and then the Bernard Palissy High School in Agen, the mathematics enthusiast completed his studies at the Rennes Engineering School. He then wrote a diploma thesis at the Institute for Electronics and Digital Technologies. It was thanks to his research director, who “had a contact with NASA,” that he was able to join one of the American space agency’s renowned centers, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), eleven years ago.
Based in Pasadena, California, the 37-year-old researcher develops new technologies that enable scientists to advance space exploration. He worked on this in particular ingenuitythe first motorized device to complete a flight on another planet, aboard the rover Endurance during the Mars 2020 mission. “I had to develop tools to be able to plan each flight of the helicopter and ensure that it would not get lost. It worked because it survived more than 70 flights for two and a half years,” explains the engineer.
He then collaborated on the project with the National Center for Space Studies (Cnes) and Thalès in France Nerdan Earth observation space mission aimed at studying surface waters and measuring changes in the surface elevation of lakes, rivers, reservoirs and oceans.
The engineer is currently working with JPL on the development of radar devices for landing on the surface of the Moon and Mars, in collaboration with the American company Space X, founded by Elon Musk.
A success that he owes to his former judo teacher Pierre Roudanès
A journey that inspires respect and which Nacer Chahat attributes in part to Pierre Roudanès, a high-ranking French judo player who was his teacher at the Passage d’Agen judo school. “It was he who taught me mental strength when I last returned to Agen two years ago. He was so happy to see me again and proud of my journey. This was probably thanks to him, because it was this mental strength that enabled me to never give up.
Another figure also meant a lot to him: Doctor Firouz, one of the former directors of JPL, who died in 2023. “When I received this award, he was the first person I thought of. He was one of my mentors. He helped me a lot, the scientist admits, when some people had doubts, he told them: “Oh, don’t worry, I know Nacer well. If he says he will do it, he will do it. “That helped me a lot.”
But above all, Nacer Chahat thanks his parents, Algerian immigrants. “They gave and sacrificed so much for me and my brothers and sisters to succeed.”
The Angers-born engineer is proud to have reached this point today – but with great humility he encourages young people to believe in their dreams. “We often promote the idea that the people who work at NASA are geniuses because it gives young people the impression that this is beyond their reach.”
A beautiful message of hope for all Lot-et-Garonnais who, like Nacer Chahat, dream of reaching the stars.