Moon mission's sinews: Band of dedicated scientists

Sudip Talukdar

The success of the Mars and Moon missions is a testimony to India’s rising stature as a global space power, driven by one of the finest bands of dedicated scientists anywhere in the world. These mighty sinews, working selflessly with exemplary commitment and focus, mastered challenging technologies in a matter of few decades, forging the phenomenal reach and reputation of the Indian Space Research Organization.

India now plays a critical role in the global satellite launch and manufacturing industry, besides executing big ticket missions like the current one.

In a first for India, two women scientists are helming a prestigious project like Chandrayaan-II, even though some of their counterparts have headed projects involving the launch of communication satellites and smaller payloads.

Initially, Muthayya Vanitha, electronics system engineer, felt hesitant to serve as project director, Chandrayaan-2, but M. Annadurai, who helmed Chandrayaan-I, persuaded her to come around. Vanitha has been with ISRO for the past 20 years. She is highly regarded for her problem solving skills. She contributed to the success of Mangalyaan, Mars mission in 2013. She also bagged the Best Woman Scientist Award of the Astronautical Society of India in 2006.

Ritu Karidhal as the mission director of Chandrayaan-2 was tasked with designing its onward autonomy system to enable the space vessel to navigate its journey and communicate with the satellite independently. She is working in tandem with Vanitha to ensure the success of the current mission. Karidhal is the recipient of ISRO Team Award for Mars Orbiter Mission and ISRO Young Scientist Award from President Abdul Kalam in 2007. Regarded as the ‘Rocket Woman,’ Karidhal holds a Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from IISC, Bengaluru, and served as deputy director, operations, for Mangalyaan in 2013-2014.

An indigenous project like the current mission costs only INR 978 crore or USD140 million, a mere fraction of Avengers: Endgame budget of USD356 million (INR 2,443 crore) and well below the budgets of many other Hollywood blockbusters. Similarly, the world sat up and took notice when ISRO managed Mangalyaan mission on a ‘shoe string’ budget of only USD 74 million (INR 450 crore) a small percentage of the USD 672 million that NASA spent on the Mars Maven orbiter. Even then, ISRO will manage with a limited corpus of only USD1.8 billion this year, making it go a long way with its globally recognized frugal engineering, as compared to NASA’s budget of USD21.5 billion, more than 10 times its size.