Dr J (Bob) Balaram: The man behind the Mars helicopter Top Searches Dr J (Bob) Balaram: The man behind the Mars helicopter Chidanand Rajghatta / TNN / Updated: Apr 19, 2021, 21:19 IST FacebookTwitterLinkedinEMail WASHINGTON: As a kid growing up in southern India in the 1960s, young Balaram was fascinated by rockets and cosmic beauty. When his uncle wrote to the US Consulate, asking for information about Nasa and space exploration, they sent back a bulging envelope stuffed with glossy booklets, entrancing the lad. His interest in space was piqued further by listening to the Moon landing on the radio. "I gobbled it up," he told Nasa's in-house journal many years later. "Long before the internet, the US had good outreach. You had my eyeballs."