Following the historic success of India’s Chandrayaan-3 Moon Mission, Dr Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State for Science & Technology, ISRO Chairman Dr S Somanath, and a panel of scientists joined India Today Senior Executive Editor Shiv Aroor during the session ‘Reaching for the Stars’ at Business Today India@100 Summit 2023 to discuss Chandrayaan-3’s success, India’s growing prowess in space sector and much more
Talking about how PM Narendra Modi has enabled the scientific community as he has a natural connect with them, Union Minister of State Dr Jitendra Singh said, "Never before has the scientific community felt so enabled."
MoS Dr Jitendra Singh spoke about the success of Chandrayaan-3 Moon Mission and its significance. He said, "This was a totally unexplored area where we landed, the south pole of the moon. The insights, the data, the information our mission will gather from there is going to be critical for all space agencies and scientists."
"Within 2-4 years, we have more than 150 private start-ups working in collaboration with Sriharikota," said Dr Jitendra Singh while highlighting how the recent Anusandhan National Research Foundation Bill 2023 will further open up the room for non-government sources
ISRO Chairman Dr S Somanath and a panel of scientists from ISRO joined the Business Today India@100 Summit 2023 virtually from the Bengaluru HQ. He talked about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to ISRO's command centre in Bengaluru and said it was a privilege for the scientists that PM Modi was there virtually during the soft-landing of Chandrayaan-3
Talking about the success of Chandrayaan-3 and PM Narendra Modi declaring the day of the landing, August 23, as National Space Day in India, ISRO Chairman Dr S Somanath said, “We now have a day to our credit for our accomplishments related to the Moon and the space.” He added that being able to land on the South pole of the Moon, a first in the world, bolsters India’s position right to the top in the world
India Today Senior Executive Editor Shiv Aroor highlighted the 'nari shakti' of ISRO while virtually interacting with Chandrayaan-3 Associate Project Director Dr Kalpana K. She shed light on the early morning interaction with PM Modi with the women scientists in Bengaluru, she said, “That was highly inspiring. There was a good amount of interaction on the overall experiences of the women scientists involved in the space programme.”
ISRO Chairman Dr S Somanath hailed the Indianised naming of Chandrayaan-3 landing point as 'Shiv Shakti' by PM Narendra Modi. Dr Somanath said, "We were overjoyed by this naming. It is conventional for space people when such extra-planetary event takes place, we generally name such locations. It is customary, but it is very spontaneous for him to identify a name that is more Indianised and Indian sounding… it is something very unique. He only can do it.”
During the India@100 Summit on Saturday, Dr S Somanath shared that rover Pragyan, which is carrying out in-situ experiments, has moved 12-plus metres on the lunar surface. "It is moving very slowly, it's a cute little baby. It can't run fast, it is crawling. It is equipped with very fantastic instruments and also beautiful navigation cameras. However the data rate is very slow, and the speed is very slow,” said the ISRO Chairman.
During the session ‘Reaching for the Stars’ at Business Today India@100 Summit 2023, Nilesh Desai, Director, SAC, Dr Anil Bhardwaj, Director, PRL, Dr Ritesh Sharma, Scientist, SAC, ISRO Chief General Manager Dr. S K Srivastava and ISRO's Harikrishnan also talked about the success of Chandrayaan-3. With #Chandrayaan3 receiving overwhelming support from the nation, ISRO's Harikrishanan expressed gratitude and said, "It does really matter to us, the kind of support that we get from the people of India, that only helps us to march ahead."