Nearly 24 years after he left the lanes of Karianwala, a modest village nestled in Pakistan’s Gujrat district, Yasir Tufail walked back through its narrow streets, not as the boy who once peered up at starry skies during power outages, but as a NASA Deputy Portfolio Manager.
His story is one of awe, struggle, and an enduring connection to home and it reads remarkably like the Bollywood classic Swades.
Tufail’s path from rural Pakistan to the frontlines of space exploration in the United States is the kind of real-life arc that feels like it belongs on the big screen. Like Shah Rukh Khan’s character in Swades, he built a life of success at NASA, contributing to some of the agency’s most high-profile missions, including the James Webb Space Telescope. But returning to his childhood school, the chalk-scratched walls and the eager eyes of local students reminded him that his journey began under the very skies that first sparked his curiosity.
“I remember as a child, during electricity cuts, we’d lie outside and watch the stars,” Tufail shared in a recent conversation with Arab News. “I once saw what I thought was a moving star. Later, I realized it was a satellite and that moment stayed with me.”
Born in Karianwala, Tufail left for the US with his family in 2001 when he was just 14. The transition from the quiet, open skies of Pakistan to the bustling, light-polluted streets of New York City was jarring. “It was a huge culture shock,” he recalled. “In New York, when I looked up, there was nothing, just a blank sky.”
But that emptiness above was soon filled with new dreams. A poster commemorating the Columbia space shuttle disaster where Indian-American astronaut Kalpana Chawla was among the crew lost, inspired him to learn more about space. That moment would define his future.
Driven by a growing passion, Tufail studied astronautical engineering at Capitol Technology University in Maryland. While still a student, he was handpicked to work on NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission — a nickname that earned him the affectionate title of “WISE guy” among friends.
From there, his career took flight.
After joining NASA full-time, he contributed to several key missions, including the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite, coincidentally, the same mission featured in Swades, where Shah Rukh Khan’s character worked at NASA. “The coincidence made me feel like life was imitating art,” he laughed.
But his defining project came later: the James Webb Space Telescope, humanity’s most advanced eye into the early universe. Tufail spent over seven years testing and integrating instruments for the telescope, which has since given the world its most breathtaking view of space. “To see those first images in 2022 and know I played a part and that’s something I’ll never forget,” he said.
Now a seasoned engineer managing portfolios that push the limits of space science, Tufail hasn’t forgotten where he came from. On a visit to Pakistan last year, he toured top universities like LUMS and NUST, telling students his story and encouraging them to pursue their passions with purpose.
“If you want to do something meaningful, you have to struggle for it,” he told a packed auditorium. “And that struggle only makes sense if you’re passionate.”
His story has already begun inspiring others, including his own family. His younger brother now works at NASA too, as a quality assurance engineer on the Dragonfly mission, which will explore Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. A family legacy, now, is taking shape in space science.
But Tufail’s dreams don’t stop here. He’s now working toward becoming an astronaut himself and training with a private pilot’s license and scuba diving certification, both prerequisites for astronaut candidacy.
“I still want to go to space,” he said. “You never know, maybe one day I will.”
