In Swades Shahrukh plays an engineer who leaves his home in rural India and comes to the United States to work for NASA. Also this happens to be the first Indian film to be actually shot inside the NASA research center at the Launch Pad 39A of the Kennedy Space Center of NASA in Florida. To add to the authenticity of his film, Gowariker actually shot a scene in the NASA space center rather than on a Filmcity Set. Shahrukh works on a rainfall monitoring satellite known as the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) in the film, which is lifted into an orbit aboard a Space Shuttle. (GPM is an actual NASA mission, currently scheduled to launch in 2007). However this techno-savvy movie is not a sci-fi attempt by Gowariker but a sensible thought-provoking film about an intelligent Indian who leaves his country for a better life abroad but later rediscovers his roots and turns back.