Chandrayaan-2: What Kalam suggested to ISRO about Moon Mission

New Delhi, July 14: At Sriharikota, as the lunar lander waits to fire off on July 15 on board the GSLV Mk-III, aka Bahubali, to its new home, the then late president Dr APJ Abdul Kalam had said that if one day the nation was able to achieve it, it would be nothing less than electrifying.

"The exploration of Moon through Chandrayaan will electrify the entire country, particularly young scientists and children," Kalam had said in 2003, after being knowledgeable that the Indian Area Analysis Organisation (Isro) is considering a Moon mission.

He said he was confident that the Moon mission is "just a start towards future planetary explorations" in India.

In his 2003 speech to Isro scientists, Kalam too had shared a dream about India's area mission. "I visualize a scene, in the year 2021, when I will be 90 years old and visiting the Sriharikota spaceport for boarding the space plane so that I can reach another planet and return safely as one of the passengers."

Chandrayaan-2 is ISRO's toughest test, yet. Its GSLV MKIII rocket will launch the space probe on July 15 from the Satish Dhawan Space Port in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, and land on the Southern Polar region of the Lunar Surface on September 6.

It is a site where no country has dared to land. Israel tried and failed in its mission a couple of months ago.

If Kalam was alive, on Monday when Chandrayaan-2 soars into outer area, he would have certainly clinched his fist within the air in pleasure as he did when India's first Moon mission-Chandrayaan-1-was efficiently launched in 2008.