Koppillil Radhakrishnan: The one who took India to Mars

In September 2014, India made the world astounded and amazed when the country's space exploration program succeeded in the first test, at a cost of only one tenth of that of the United States.

And the person behind that success is the current president of ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) - professor Koppillil Radhakrishnan. Please send to the reader the translation of the article about this respectable professor in the Wall Street Journal:

Professor Koppillil Radhakrishnan

Journey as a cosmologist is not always smooth for Koppillil Radhakrishnan, who led India's successful Mars exploration mission."I started my career with a failed missile launch," said Professor Radhakrishnan - "And then another failure."

Shortly after he became president of India's space exploration program in 2009, GSAT 4 - a technology telecommunications satellite - failed to launch. Later, in 2010, a similar satellite model could not leave the ground."If you are part of the space industry, you will have to learn from failure," said Professor Radhakrishnan.

Professor knows that he can retreat completely when everything is out of his control. If so, then perhaps India can still reach the Red Planet, but they can hardly succeed quickly, right on the first try, at the current low cost.

The success of India's $ 74 million Mars expedition mission in September 2014 has astonished many people who know that India is now home to some of the poorest people in the world. gender. When asked if he felt uneasy about the space exploration program, when issues such as sexual abuse, hunger or high mortality rates were very stressful. In India, Professor Radhakrishnan replied, "I have a concern. . But the applicability is the driving force for India's space exploration program, so it needs to be useful to the people." .

India's Mars mission costs much less than the US $ 610 million of the US on a similar mission, making it the cheapest of the recent Martian exploration programs. . In addition to using a used launcher and applying slingshot methods to push the probe out of Earth's orbit, ISRO has also cut costs by developing and manufacturing the entire ship. Its pillar in India.

Like the Mangalyaan exploration ship, Professor Radhakrishnan's scientific career was completely developed in the country. He was a student of a public technical college in the southern state of Kerala, where he grew up. He holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore and a Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, West Bengal.

After joining ISRO in 1971, Professor Radhakrishnan became the right-hand man of the current president - URRao - during the organization's least successful time in the 1980s, when it was on this mission. to another mission constantly failed. Professor said he learned many lessons from closely monitoring Mr. Rao's reaction during that time.

"You need to have nerves of steel," said the professor. "I didn't smile or clap until the satellite was successfully launched." Only when the Mangalyaan probe entered Mars's orbit at 8:00 am on September 24, did Radhakrishnan smile and India's space program became known to the world.

A week later, ISRO signed an agreement with NASA to work together on future Mars expeditions. China has also signed a cooperation agreement with India, including the development of satellites for science, remote sensing and communication experiments. After years of self-research, India has now become one of the best known members of the universe.

Next month, ISRO will test its first crew compartment."We are taking the first steps in the field of bringing people to space, by creating an escape chamber system for the crew," said Radhakrishnan. He estimates that in about eight years, India will be able to bring people to space, although no Indian astronauts have yet been trained.

India took four years to go from research to the exploration of Mars to orbit. But the biggest turning point, according to Professor Radhakrishnan, came in 2008, when ISRO successfully launched its Moon probe . "It is a distance of 400,000km. For the first time we have escaped the sphere of gravity and face the deep space," said Professor Radhakrishnan.

Reference: Wall Street Journal