Still gazing at the stars in awe

When one of India’s renowned space scientists writes a book, the reader expects to get up-close and personal with the country’s space effort. Space and Beyond: Professional Voyage of K Kasturirangan helps you do that, offering a grandstand view of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)’S development story, from its humble beginnings to becoming one of the world’s leading space agencies. While many others have chronicled this fascinating tale, Kasturirangan offers exclusive insight into the complex processes behind visualising and incubating the ideas and technology that transformed not only ISRO over the years, but India’s development landscape as well.

As a former ISRO chief, Kasturirangan is uniquely placed to tell this story, having had five successive prime ministers entrust him with decisionmaking at the highest level on crucial national development programmes.

Edited by BN Suresh, chancellor of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, this collection of lectures delivered at major national and international fora over the years offers distilled wisdom on the managerial attributes and leadership qualities that are indispensable to any endeavour.

Kasturirangan’s journey from a boyhood of “gazing up in sheer awe at the Ernakulam night sky unchallenged by electric lights”, to becoming an astrophysics researcher under Vikram Sarabhai, the father of India’s space programme (who also guided India’s nuclear energy programme), to his eventual involvement in India’s space effort for over 35 years — nine as its chairman — makes for absorbing reading.

During his “professional voyage”, he wore many hats, including that of member of the Rajya

Sabha and the Planning Commission of

India. So we hear the inside stories behind key national development initiatives such as the Indo-us Nuclear Agreement of 2008, the High Level Working Group for “developing the strategy for the conservation and preservation of the Western Ghats” and “India’s blueprint for education for the next 20 years” (the National Education Policy 2020).

As a young scientist weighing offers of lucrative research positions abroad, Kasturirangan recounts how Sarabhai gave him the choice of staying back in India as a system specialist in the fledgling space programme. This led to his “very special role in the design and development of India’s first satellite, Aryabhata” and to later leading teams that also built India’s first earth observation satellites —

Space and Beyond: Professional Voyage of K Kasturirangan Edited by BN Suresh 695pp, ~7,166

Springer Nature

Bhaskara-i and Bhaskara-ii, followed by the series of IRS satellites. These satellites are among the most advanced civilian applications satellites in the world. Global satellite manufacturers plump for IRS imagery and leading European companies import Indian satellite subsystems. The book describes the building of rockets such as the Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV)-3; the Augmented SLV, ISRO’S workhorse launcher; the Polar SLV; and the Geosynchronous SLV, offering a broadbrush introduction to esoteric topics such as inertial guidance and cryogenics.

For those interested, calculations and diagrams pepper the text too. The untold story of how India’s Chandrayaan moon missions actually began — when the author first thought aloud about it in a 1999 lecture in New Delhi, “which elicited tremendous response” — is particularly interesting.

This book is a treasure for researchers, scientists, policymakers and students alike.

Prakash Chandra writes on space and astronomy