The son of a former Railways employee, P. Veeramuthuvel, has been in charge of the overall Chandrayaan mission and putting together Chandrayaan-3 in coordination with ISRO centres. After the launch of Chandrayaan-3 by the LVM 3 rocket on July 14, Veeramuthuvel and his team were at the mission control room in the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network Centre (ISTRAC) constantly monitoring the operations of the spacecraft during its 3,84,000 km journey to the moon.
Veeramuthuvel and his team supervised the multiple orbit raising and lowering manoeuvres of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft that took it to the orbit of the moon before the final descent to the lunar surface on August 23 at 17.47 hours.
Mohana Kumar is ISRO’s Mission Director who supervised the July 14 launch of Chandrayaan-3 on an LMV3 rocket. He was the one who made the first formal announcement of the launch’s success on July 14 at Sriharikota. “This is Mission Director (S. Mohana Kumar). The LMV3/Chandrayaan mission accomplished its precise satellite injection. The LVM3-M4 mission is successful,” he had said.
“I am very happy to say that the LMV3 rocket injected the Chandrayaan-3 satellite into a precise orbit and once again the vehicle has proved to be one of the most reliable heavy-lift rockets of the ISRO,” he had said.
In March 2023, the ISRO veteran was the Mission Director of an LMV3 launch of satellites for the One Web India 2 service.
Mohana Kumar is a senior scientist at ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram, which is the main centre for building ISRO’s rocket capabilities. He has been with the ISRO for over 30 years.
Sankaran is the Director of what was formerly known as the ISRO Satellite Centre, the agency which builds spacecraft for the agency’s space missions. The Chandra yaan-3 spacecraft was built at the URSC. Sankaran has been the Director of URSC since June 2021. He was earlier the Deputy Director of the Communication and Power Systems Unit at the URSC and had a major role in the development of solar arrays, power systems and communication systems for ISRO’s Chandrayaan 1 and 2 and the Mars Orbiter Missions (MOM).
He has a Master’s degree in Physics from the Bharathidasan University of Tiruchirappalli.
