Okay. Kasturirangan, the previous chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) who handed away in Bengaluru, was as soon as referred to as the “Chairman with golden fingers” in the ISRO neighborhood, G. Madhavan Nair, who had succeeded him to the highest publish in 2003, recalled on Friday.
Dr. Kasturirangan was a “very meticulous person” who did a wonderful job as Chairman throughout the nine-year interval from 1994 that he was on the helm, Dr. Madhavan Nair advised The Hindu.
ISRO carried out a variety of missions throughout this era, which, although not many in quantity, had been all profitable. “It was not luck. He was a very meticulous person, someone who never left anything to chance. He would go into the details of each and every thing, analyse, and make sure all the data were collected. Unless he was fully satisfied he never gave the go-ahead,” Dr. Madhavan Nair mentioned.
An alumnus of the Sree Rama Varma High School in Ernakulam, Dr. Kasturirangan was a part of the Indian house programme from its early days. He was Project Director for India’s first two experimental earth remark satellites, Bhaskara-I and Bhaskara-II, and later the primary operational Indian Remote Sensing Satellite, IRS-1A.
Before all that, Dr. Kasturirangan was once a analysis affiliate on the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, in the late Nineteen Sixties, which is the place Dr. Madhavan Nair first met him.
Dr. Madhavan Nair remembers that the house company was going via a powerful section when Dr. Kasturirangan took over from U.R. Rao as Chairman in 1994.
“The first launch of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV D1 in September 1993), in the last leg of Prof. Rao’s tenure, was not a successful one. So it fell on Dr. Kasturirangan to see to it that the PSLV become a success. Of course, there were other challenges too, like making advanced remote sensing satellites and so on,” he mentioned.
Bigger hassle was brewing in the type of the ISRO espionage case of 1994, when a variety of senior scientists had been accused of promoting space-tech secrets and techniques. It had additionally escalated into a full-blown political controversy in Kerala. Though subsequently declared as fabricated, the case performed havoc with the lives of the accused scientists and the morale of the house company.
Dr. Kasturirangan’s predilection to go about issues in his attribute quiet means was on show in his dealing with of the occasions, in keeping with Dr. Madhavan Nair.
“He was trying to look at the inner details. He conducted all the reviews and he did the job silently. After making sure that no spying had taken place, he took action, spoke to (then Prime Minister) P.V. Narasimha Rao and made sure that the CBI came into the picture,” Dr. Madhavan Nair mentioned. “That was his nature, he did it silently and managed the situation well.”
He additionally got here right down to Thiruvananthapuram and spoke to the ISRO employees on the Veli and Valiamala items, in a bid to spice up their morale, Dr. Madhavan Nair remembers.
Published – April 25, 2025 09:10 pm IST
