Chennai, Aug 24 (UNI) The man behind the success of the India’s third Lunar Mission was a scientist from Tamil Nadu, who joined ISRO nine years back and completely devoted himself for the success of the Chandrayaan-3 project and stayed away from the family.
The Project Director of the successful Chandrayan-3 mission is P Veeramuthuvel, a mechanical engineer with a PhD from IIT Madras, who has literally got separated from the family and devoted himself for its success, devoting his full concentration on it, ever since it was incepted and hardly spoke to his dad, wife and daughter during the entire mission.
Talking to a TV channel at his native Villuppuram, his father P.Palanivel said his son was so devoted to the mission and completely kept away from the family and hardly spoke to me, his wife or daughter”.
“He was literally separated from the family, devoted himself and applied his full concentration for the mission to make it a success”, his father P.Palanivel, who offered special prayers at a temple in his district for the mission’s success, said.
“He has even shifted his daughter to Coimbatore to enable her to pursue her education and never spoke to me or even his wife. Even if he comes home, he will never talk to me or interact with his wife and his concentration was all in the Chandrayaan-3 mission”, he said.
“I did not ask him or question for not talking to me, and wanted him to concentrate on this mission, which turned out to be a success”, he added.
“Even if I ask my daughter-in-law on whether he spoke to her whenever he visited home, she replied in the negative…”no mama (as the father-in-law was traditionally addressed by the daughter-in-laws in Tamil Nadu) was her reply.
“Such was his devotion and determination”, he added.
“I am happy about the success of the mission and my son for devoting his entire attention on it”, Mr Palanivel said.
On whether he offered any advise to his son during the mission, Palanivel said his son was more intelligent than him. “What advise I can give…he is more intelligent than me”, he added in a humble note.
Mr Palanivel at least now hope that his son would come and spend some time with the family, having successfully accomplished the mission.
The son of a former Railway employee, Veeramuthuvel has been in charge of the overall mission of putting together Chandrayaan-3 in coordination with multiple ISRO centres, tracking constantly to monitor the health and operations of the spacecraft on its 3,84,000 km voyage to the moon.
The soft spoken Veeramuthuvel and his team have supervised the multiple orbit raising and lowering manoeuvres of the Chandrayaan 3 spacecraft that has taken it to the orbit of the moon ahead of the powered descent that was successfully done on Wednesday evening.
In the final 17 minutes of the descent of Chandrayaan, Veeramuthuvel’s team only watched the proceedings as the spacecraft functioned autonomously to land after the Automatic Landing System was initiated.
After the Chandrayaan-3 was launched from Sriharikota on July 14 beginning it’s moon voyage, he had said that “Our journey to the moon has begun now for the most awaited soft landing. We will be closely monitoring and controlling the spacecraft from ISTRAC Bengaluru”.
At that time he said “Many critical manoeuvres are lined up starting with the earthbound manoeuvres and insertion of the satellite into the lunar orbit, separation of the lander from the propulsion module and a set of deboost operations and finally the powered descent phase for a soft landing,” Veeramuthuvel said.
And after a 42-day long space odyssey and as a reward for his dedication, commitment and determination, Chandrayaan-3 ticked all the boxes correctly with the soft landing in a flawless manner on the Moon’s South Polar Region, which Veeramuthuvel summed up, “India has become the first country to achieve it”.
Kudos…a fitting reward for his commitment and dedication !
