Meet the woman behind ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 mission

After the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched the Chandrayaan-3 mission, the name of Dr Ritu Karidhal Srivastava has become the talk of the country. Known as India’s ‘rocket woman’, Dr Karidhal is one of the senior scientists at ISRO and is leading the Chandrayaan-3 mission.

Born and brought up in Lucknow, she went on to pursue MSc in Physics from Lucknow University in 1996 and MTech from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru. With over 20 papers in national and international journals published, Dr Karidhal was the Mission Director of Chandrayaan-2 and the Deputy Operations Director of Mangalyaan, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM).

Having been fascinated by space from a young age, Dr Karidhal joined ISRO in November 1997. She also received the ‘ISRO Young Scientist Award’ from former President APJ Abdul Kalam, who was known as the ‘missile man of India’. She has also received ‘ISRO Team Award for MOM in 2015’, ‘ASI Team Award’, ‘Women Achievers in Aerospace, 2017’ by the Society of Indian Aerospace Technologies & Industries (SIATI).

The Chandrayaan-3 mission was launched on July 14 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota at 2:35 pm. This is ISRO’s second attempt to land a spacecraft on the moon.