Two women leaders behind the success of Chandrayaan-2

Chandrayaan-2 for the second time successfully sets off from Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh on Monday making India a powerful space superpower.

The project credit goes to the team leading behind the mission, their dedication and immense hard work in the process of creating history in itself. Another interesting thing to be noted- the project was lead by two brilliant women leaders as mentioned by K Sivan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

The project leader Muthayya Vanitha, will be the first woman project direct director of ISRO. She is an electronic system engineer who had a heavy task of building a spaceship-like Chandrayaan-2. Her task to handle the data was highly accurate for India’s remote sensing satellites. Dr. M Anndurai, the first project director of Chandrayaan-1 says “ Vanitha is an expert in data handling. She was comfortable in her digital/hardware section and was hesitant to move to a project director role. This role not only involves nearly 18 hours of the work day at its peak, which means many sacrifices but is also in the national limelight bringing heavy responsibility of its own.”

On the other hand, Ritu Karidhal famously called as the ‘rocket woman of India’ was a Deputy Operation Director for the Mars Orbiter Mission in 2013. She has completed her Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Her responsibility at the agency was to check the spacecrafts outward autonomy system. Also, she has received the ISRO team Award MOM, Women achievers in Aerospace, among other accolades.

The success behind their success is their dedication, patience, hard work and lastly the long tedious hours of work they put up for the project. Chandrayaan-2 will explore the South Pole region of the moon which is going to be the biggest milestone for India’s Scientific capabilities.