It was a perfect launch of Chandrayaan, this blogger had the opportunity to watch it live. All the Channels were hooked on to this event at 6:20am. 5 minutes to go, 60seconds to go…excitement was palpable. One anchor when asked about impression of scientist said that they all look “cool cucumbers”!!. The launch vehicle followed the prescribed path perfectly. I guess there were tense moments till the first leg got over then there were celebrations, but the commentary by ISRO (thankfully in Hindi and English) assured everything was fine. It was a great experience for this blogger.PSLV had eleven consecutive perfect launches so far, now that is spectacular. Also putting into perspective that its first launch was a failure. This blogger was witness to that in 1993 in VSSC, but the best part was they analyzed and reanalyzed the data for weeks together to find the fault, this blogger had the opportunity to watch some of them. Another interesting fact is much much before the actual launch they bring out in-house magazine detailing weekly progress (this blogger went through that in their library-excellent library that one). They are very meticulous and systematic, the kind I have never come across before.
I guess ISR
O will have to shift to GSLV from PSLV in near future as the payload increases that will be huge challenge for moon mission. But then ISRO has successful history of GSLV too. This blogger congratulates scientists at ISRO for this spectacular launch and hopes that Chandrayaan has safe landing in moon.This blogger will be hooked to the the progress in this event.
Madhavan Nair and his team have achieved something incredible, understand that the expense is one-tenth that of NASA, they were working with shoe string budget. It also a matter of extreme pride for this blogger that there are lots scientists in ISRO (including the Chairperson) who are alumni of Government College of Engineering Trivandrum. Unlike IIT ians engineers from Government colleges and RECs are mostly grounded and take the less trodden path. This is a tribute to them. While in JNU i recall the relation with next door IIT was quite fractious !!. I guess I have started to romanticize the right moment to stop this blog!!!
