Chandrayaan-3: Meet The Brains Behind India's Moon Mission

In a momentous achievement for India's space programme, the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the lunar south pole on Wednesday sparked jubilant reactions from around the world, including the Indian diaspora.

India scripted history as the ambitious third Moon mission of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) touched down on the Moon's south pole, propelling the country to an exclusive club of four and making it the first nation to land on the uncharted surface.

Even as we celebrate the moment, it is time to hail the brains behind this space mission:

S Somanath, ISRO Chief
Sreedhara Panicker Somanath is an Indian aeronautical engineer who was born in July 1963. Somanath held the positions of director of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre and the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram. He is renowned for his contributions to the design of launch vehicles, especially in the fields of structural dynamics, structural design and pyrotechnics.

He has been the face of Chandrayaan-3 and has supervised other ongoing missions such as Aditya-L1 to Sun and Gaganyaan (India's first manned mission). Tasked with leading the Indian space agency, he bore the responsibility of ensuring thorough testing for the Chandrayaan-3 satellite prior to its launch. A graduate of the esteemed Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, he possesses proficiency in Sanskrit and has even taken on an acting role in a Sanskrit film titled 'Yaanam.'

Dr P Veeramuthuvel, Project Director
Assuming the position of Chandrayaan-3 project director in 2019, P Veeramuthuvel previously served as a deputy director at ISRO's primary office in the Space Infrastructure Programme Office. He also held a significant role in Chandrayaan-2. Hailing from Villupuram in Tamil Nadu, Veeramuthuvel is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M).

Drawing on his deep understanding of the lander Vikram, which encountered failure in 2019, he has played a pivotal role in developing a significantly more resilient Chandrayaan-3 mission.

K Kalpana, Associate Project Director
Kalpana K is the Deputy Project Director of the Chandrayaan-3 mission. In addition to her involvement in the Chandrayaan-3 project, she brings a wealth of experience from her contributions to the Chandrayaan-2 and Mangalyaan missions.

Apart from these three, M Srikanth, Mission Operations Director and 27 other deputy project directors from different ISRO centres have contributed significantly to the success of Chandrayaan-3.

The major ISRO Centres/units involved in the design, development, testing and realization of the CH-3 mission include

U R Rao Satellite Centre, URSC, Bengaluru
Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, VSSC, Trivandrum
Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre, LPSC Trivandrum & Bangalore
ISRO Satellite Tracking Centre, ISTRAC, Bangalore
Space Applications Centre, SAC, Ahmedabad
Laboratory for Electro-Optics Systems, LEOS, Bengaluru
ISRO Inertial Systems Unit, IISU, Trivandrum
ISRO Propulsion Complex, IPRC, Mahendragiri
Satish Dhawan Space Centre, SDSC-SHAR
National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Hyderabad
Physical Research Laboratory, PRL
Space Physics Laboratory, SPL