“India is on the moon,” said S Somanath, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation. “Chandrayaan-3 is the result of work done by thousands of engineers and scientists, our staff, and industries, support teams across ISRO and other institutions,” he said and thanked the team of scientists that worked behind its moon mission Chandrayaan-3. He was speaking after the successful soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 at the lunar south pole on the evening of Wednesday, August 23.
Project Director Veera Muthuvel said, “It gives me immense pleasure to have been the director. The entire mission, from launch to landing, happened flawlessly and as per the timeline. We have become the fourth country to demonstrate a soft landing on the moon’s surface and the first country to go near the south pole of the moon.” He also thanked the various teams at ISRO who contributed to the success of Chandrayaan-3.
Mission Director Sreekanth too expressed his pleasure at having been a part of Chandrayaan-3. He also extended thanks to all team members who ensured that mission operations were carried out flawlessly.
Associate Project Director Kalpana Kalahasti said, “This will be the most memorable and happiest moment for all of us. From the day we started rebuilding our spacecraft after the experience of Chandrayaan-2, it has been breathe-in, breathe-out Chandrayaan-3 for our team. Starting from the reconfiguration to all the special tests and the assimilations, we have conducted meticulously.”
ISRO scientist M Shankaran, who coordinated the efforts of all the teams in ISRO and other institutions for the success of Chandrayaan-3, said, “Today, we have achieved what we set out to achieve in 2019. Here, I will discuss the tremendous effort made by the entire project team, who have only been focused on Chandrayaan. The amount of criticism faced, and the number of simulations and reviews they’ve gone through, my heart goes out to them. That is what ISRO is all about and has taught us to do. Today, this success has put us at a higher responsibility like the Prime Minister has asked of us. Nothing less than spectacular will we be worthy of. We will be looking at putting man in space, putting a spacecraft around Venus and landing a craft on Mars. All these activities have been going on and this success today will inspire us further.” He also said that, as a person with 36 years of experience in this field, he is aware of the thousands of things that could have gone wrong in a mission like this. That none of it went wrong is a reflection of the efforts put in by everyone in the team, he added.