Lucknow makes its presence felt with Chandrayaan 2
- Arijit Bose
- Jul 27, 2019
- 3 min read
Chandrayaan 2 launching at Sriharikota launchpad
India’s women over the past few decades have breached many a frontier to prove that they are no less than their male counterparts. As the news of Chandrayaan 2’s successful lift off sinks in, India cannot help but hail some of its finest space scientists ironically women who have not just helped India reach the Red Planet, but now are part of the glorious Mission Moon.
50 years after the legendary Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, situated 3 lakh 84 thousand km from earth in space, now India can proudly say that by September, India too will be a proud member of the never ending race to the moon.
A big chunk of the accolades for this goes to the women of this great nation. One of them being a Lucknowite, Ritu Karidhal Srivastava.
The lady has been getting congratulatory messages aplenty from teachers, batchmates and relatives.
An MSc in Physics from LU in 1996, not only are phones constantly ringing, even the papers and noted websites have been running her story which has been an element of pride for many in the city of Nawabs.
A bright scholar, Ritu is slated to be felicitated by her department as the Chandrayaan – 2 Mission Director.
Her achievement has even attracted massive praise from the UP CM, Yogi Adityanath who had a good word for ISRO scientists.
Batchmates quoted across the media maintain she was an ace scholar and had indepth knowledge of her domain. She is remembered by confidantes as a polite person who had a helpful streak in her.
Ritu and many of her ilk hit the headlines after Chandrayaan 2 lifted off from its launch pad at Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota at 2:43 pm on Monday.
Karidhal a graduate of Lucknow University and an Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, she played lead role in navigating ISRO’s Mangalyaan spacecraft to Mars. She is currently Mission Director for Chandrayaan 2.
The mission tasted success, a week after the mission was aborted 56 minutes before lift-off.
India with the lift off joins the big league of US, Russia and China.
This is interestingly for the first time that an inter-planetary mission is being spearheaded by ace women scientists. Muthayya Vanitha and Ritu Karidhal have done India proud.
While Vanitha Muthaiya has spent 32 years at ISRO, Ritu Karidhal, an aerospace engineer, has spent 22 years at the ISRO.
Since the lift off of Chandrayaan 2 the house of Ritu in Rajajipuram has been celebrating with gay abandon.
Ritu gains a lot of her strength from her family including husband, Avinash, and her two children Aditya and Anisha.
From a very tender age, Ritu was an avid sky watcher who wanted to breach space frontiers.
As a young girl she would scan newspapers for information about Nasa and Isro projects.
In her glorious stint at ISRO for 18 years, Karidhal has worked on multiple prestigious projects.
Much like Vanitha and Karidhal, almost 30 per cent of the workforce at ISRO is women.
Chandrayaan-2 was given final touches under watch of 58-year-old P Kunhikrishnan, a rocket engineer-turned-satellite fabricator the Director, UR Rao Satellite Center of ISRO.
Among the other rominent women who have contributed immensely to the project include T.K. Anuradha, N Valaramati, Moumita Datta, V.R Lalitambika, Nandini Harinath, Meenal Rohit and Seetha Somasamudram.
Chandrayaan 2 comes exactly 11 years after launch of India’s first lunar mission – Chandrayaan-1 which orbited Moon in searched of water.
Costing a 3000 crores, the Chandrayaan 2, weighs 3890 kilograms. The launcher GSLV – MK 2 meanwhile weighs around 640 tonnes.
China had sent its Chang – E3 spacecraft to the moon as early as 2012. Even Israel as early as February has taken babysteps in that direction as early as February 2019. Japan took its first steps towards the moon in 2007 when it launched its lunar orbitor Selene. The idea of having a Chandrayaan 2 like experiment is to find water and minerals on the lunar surface.
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