A LESSON IN ROCKET SCIENCE

Every great idea and launch has its beginnings in the most humble manner. When ISRO was started and the first-ever rocket was launched in the year 1963, they requested a church priest to help them acquire space in a small fishing village in Kerala. It took the bewildered fishermen, more than rocket science to understand that what was about to launch would change the shape of the future and even the centuries-old fishing methods that had been passed on.

In an enlightening talk by Padmashree awardee and former Chairperson of the prestigious government space agency ISRO, Dr. AS Kiran Kumar, gave the FICCI FLO Bangalore audience an insight into ISRO, right from its inception to its present day. It is no small feat because thousands of brilliant minds get together with one sole mission while working closely together on every single project.

The current record status at ISRO is as follows- 101 spacecraft missions 72 launch missions, 269 foreign satellites, 2 re-entry missions, 9 student satellites. The insightful talk by Dr. Kiran Kumar was followed by an engrossing panel discussion by industry experts Ms Kalpana Arvind – Deputy Director Chandraayan 2 Mr Laxmesh – Head, Missiles & Aerospace Missions from Larsen &Toubro Vinod Chippalkatti – President, strategic electronics, Centum Electronics Sandhya Thyagarajan- Vice President, strategic electronics, Centum Electronics. Sandhya Thyagarajan, also our very own Flo member, deftly moderated the discussion amongst the experts in the panel, on the topic of the role of industries in ISRO and how they have worked in tandem over the years to achieve their goals and the many in the pipeline. Kalpana quipped that, when she joined ISRO 30 years back, they would launch a satellite once in 3 years and now the frequency is heading to one almost every month, which may soon become a weekly launch!