ISRO chief S Somanath's witty response on Chandrayaan-3's cost-effectiveness

After the ‘historic’ soft landing of Chandrayaan-3's lander Vikram on the South Pole of the lunar surface on Wednesday at 6:04 pm, ISRO Chief S Somanath gave a witty response elaborating on the Chandrayaan-3 mission cost-effectiveness. Expressing joy, the ISRO Chief said that he doesn't want to give too detailed answers and reveal our secrets, else others will learn how we are so cost-effective. 

"ISRO is already strong. We must thank all those nations which helped us in the Chandrayaan-3 mission. We had support from the USA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA). Our colleagues in other scientific organisations in this country. Especially, the support came in the form of ground stations of other countries. Tracking Chandrayaan-3 from India alone is very difficult, you cannot see the spacecraft all the time. Multiple tracking stations worldwide, such as the South Point Satellite Station in Hawaii, Goldstone in California, Kourou in French Guiana, Madrid in Spain, Goonhilly in the UK, and Canberra in Australia helped. These stations continuously tracked Chandrayaan-3 from various angles, ensuring it remains visible and can be safely guided towards the moon," the ISRO Chairman said. 

He further said that multiple ground stations across the world were beaming the data to us (ISRO) and we were able to get real-time information. "The second help came from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, they were also estimating the position of the Chandrayaan-3 accurately using their technology and passing that information to us which gave us the confidence to work on the mission design, trajectory design of the final phase of the mission," S Somanath said. 

ISRO Chief credits success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission the 'pain and agony' of scientists

ISRO Chairman S Somanath on Wednesday toasted the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, crediting it to the 'pain and agony' of all the scientists who persevered on it, and expressed confidence that the space agency would similarly land a spacecraft on Mars in the coming years. 

Acknowledging the contribution of a generation of leadership by the scientists of the country's space agency for the Chandrayaan-3 mission's success, he said this is an 'incremental progress' and 'definitely a huge one'. The journey to the Moon is tough and soft-landing is difficult for any nation to achieve today even with the advancement of technology, he said, pointing out that India achieved it in just two missions. Chandrayaan-2, the first mission with the objective of soft landing on the Moon had a narrow miss, while the Chandrayaan-3 mission was perfectly executed.

"It (success of Chandrayaan-3 mission) gives confidence to configure missions to not only go to the Moon, but also to go to Mars, sometimes (perhaps) land on Mars, may be in future go to Venus and other planets...", he said.