The Chandrayaan-3 lunar expedition, led by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), made a spectacular soft landing on August 23rd at 6:04 PM (Indian Standard Time). Dr. Ritu Karidhal Srivastava, also known as India’s ‘rocket woman,’ is one of ISRO’s leading scientists and is supposed to be in charge of the Chandrayaan-3 project.
India made history by becoming the first country to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon’s southern polar region, thanks to the ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 satellite.
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) successfully launched the Chandrayaan-3 mission on Friday (July 14) at 2:35 p.m. (local time) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota. The launch was the country’s third lunar mission and its second attempt at a gentle landing on the moon’s surface.
Following the successful launch of the ‘Vikram’ moon lander, which was perched on a GSLV Mark 3 heavy-lift launch vehicle, congratulations began to come in for the ISRO team of scientists. Unlike its predecessor, the Chandrayaan-2 mission, this time a large number of women are behind the initiative.
Previously, an ISRO senior official allegedly stated that approximately 54 female engineers and scientists are working directly for the Chandrayaan-3 mission, in capacities such as associates, deputy project directors, and project managers for various systems, and so on.
Who is Ritu Karidhal?
Dr. Ritu Karidhal was the mission director of Chandrayaan-2 and the deputy operations director of Mangalyaan, ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), which successfully orbited the Red Planet in 2014, making India the first Asian country to do so.
Karidhal was born and raised in the Indian city of Lucknow, in the state of Uttar Pradesh. In 1996, she received her MSc in Physics from Lucknow University and her MTech in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru.
She is claimed to have been captivated by space since an early age and to have wanted to explore it. During her student days, one of her pastimes was collecting news items on ISRO or NASA space activities.
Karidhal joined ISRO in November 1997 and worked on many famous missions for the Indian space organization, playing a crucial part in the majority of them. Karidhal, according to the Women Economic Forum (WEF), has published more than 20 papers in international and national journals.
The successful launch of Chandrayaan-3
“It is a matter of pride for us since she has been our student. She was a bright student and had even qualified for GATE. She got selected for ISRO while she was pursuing her PhD from here,” Lucknow University Professor Poonam Tandon said about Karidhal, in an interview with PTI, on Friday.
Karidhal’s family was also spotted celebrating and distributing sweets after ISRO’s LVM3 M4 rocket successfully launched into orbit.
