Shruti Saxena
India on Wednesday made history by becoming the first country in the world to enter the Martian orbit in its maiden attempt.
It is indeed a proud moment as India now joins the United States, European Space Agency and the former Soviet Union in the elite club of Martian explorers.
Prime Minister, Narendra Modi congratulated the scientists for the remarkable achievement and said: “History has been created, we have dared to reach out to the unknown. India has created history today, We have reached which was nearly impossible.”
Also read: India creates history as Mangalyaan successfully placed in Mars orbit
However, the task was not easy, it was the hard word of a team of 14 ISRO scientists who are the think tank behind this mission.
Here is the list of the people who made it possible:
K Radhakrishnan: He is the Chairman of ISRO. He is being considered as the man of the moment as he headed the mission and the overall activities. “We have demonstrated and proved our technological capabilities in undertaking outer space missions with an indigenous rocket and our own spacecraft”, said a beaming ISRO chairman on the occasion.
A S Kiran Kumar: He is the Director of Satellite Application Centre (SAC) and joined ISRO in the year 1975. He made his contribution in the designing and development of Electro-Optical Imaging Sensors for Airborne, LEO and GEO platform based imaging sensors starting from Bhaskara TV payload to the latest TMC ad HySI payloads for Chandrayaan-1 missions.
V Adimurthy: He is a professor at Satish Dhawan Centre and Dean of Research at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST). He is the Mission Concept Designer for Mars Orbiter Mission.
Mylswamy Annadurai: He is presently serving as the Programme Director for IRS&SSS (Indian Remote Sensing & Small, Science and Student Satellites) that include Chandrayaan-1, Chandrayaan-2, ASTROSAT, Aditya-1 , Mars Orbiter Mission and many Indian Remote Sensing missions.
B S Chandrashekar: He is the Director at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC).
P Robert: He is serving as the Operations Director, MOM. He has been with ISRO since 1990.
Subbiah Arunan: Born in born in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, he is the Project Director of Mars Orbiter Mission.
V Kesavaraju: V Kesava Raju is the Post-Launch Mission Director of Mars Orbiter Mission.
P Ekambaram: He is the Operations Director, MOM
P Kunhikrishnan: He joined ISRO in 1986. He is the Launch Mission Director, PSLV-XL
S K Shivkumar: He was the was part of the team that developed the telemetry system for Chandrayaan-I. He is Orbiting payload Director, ISAC.
B Jayakumar: He is Launch Vehicle Director of PSLV project.
V Koteswara Rao: He is the scientific secretary at ISRO.
(Compilation)
