The historic moon landing of the Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan3 is not only an achievement for India itself but for the entire mankind around the globe, says Indian High Commissioner to Fiji Shri P.S. Karthigeyan.
P.S. Karthigeyan in his address during the celebration reception at the LICI building on Thursday evening following the safe landing of the Indian Spacecraft, said reaching the south pole of the Moon was daunting for the Indian Space Research Organisation.
“What we saw yesterday is one of the most complex engineering feats. Just imagine putting an arbiter on the other side of the moon about 360,000 kilometers from Earth. Launching a lander to land in one of the most difficult terrains south pole of the moon where no one has gone before,” P.S. Karthigeyan.
“There are three countries which have done the feat of landing on the surface of the moon before us, the United States, European Union and China but none of them have done it at the South pole so we took it as a challenge to make sure that we go to an area unexplored by anybody else in the world.”
“What billions of us also watched was this culmination of a long process. It’s not an easy process, never meant to be an easy process. When we set up the Indian National Committee for Space Research in 1962, which eventually became ISRO and the Department of Space, we knew that it was a daunting task. We had this great ambition, we knew that it would take a long process but we were ready for that. We were ready for the sacrifice and thanks to the generations of scientists, technologists and people associated with this great institution for the Indian space organisation, we managed to achieve what we did yesterday.”
He also emphasised that India will achieve what they have set its sights on and this is just a testimony to what we can do if we put our hearts, minds and soul together.
“Yesterday’s launch was very special indeed. It was like going back to our childhood when we all thought that Space was the ultimate frontier and all of us had our own small notions of what we’ll do.”
“What we witnessed was the real achievement and I joined a grateful nation and this is not just an Indian achievement, it’s all for humanity. I joined the entire humanity in paying our tribute, and some gratitude to this wonderful institution. This team ISRO and of course all our brothers and sisters who have worked hard for this mission’s success, and I wish them all the very best in many other missions that they have planned for the future.”
He added that Gaganyaan and Aditya L1 are the next two immediate missions India will undertake in the upcoming years.
“This is not where we are going to stop; we have already made a number of plans to launch missions and more missions to the moon. We are very soon going to have a manned mission to space. It’s called the ‘Gaganyaan’ . It’s going to happen to other planets and deep space. We are planning multiple missions.”
“But one of the immediate missions that is being planned is ‘Aditya L1’. This is going to be put in the space and observatory to study about the Sun, the giver of life and called ‘Aditya’ in Sanskrit or Hindi.”
Meanwhile P.S. Karthigeyan has first-hand witnessed the ISRO’s IRNSS-1I Mission: Indian navigational satellite IRNSS-1I launch on board the PSLV-C41 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota on 12 April 2018.
