From Suriname to Space: Rohit Goeptar’s 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. …