These Women Will Lead India's Historic Chandrayaan-2 Mission, We Are So Proud Of Them

At 2.51 a.m. on July 15, India has a date with history as Chandrayaan-2 Moon Mission is all set to take off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, the Indian Space Research Organisation¡¯s space centre in Andhra Pradesh.

Ritu Karidhal (left) and Muthayya Vanitha (right)

Apart from the achievement, what makes it more special that this is for the first time, a woman is heading the project. Muthyya Vanitha is heading the Chandrayaan 2 project as project director and Ritu Karidhan is leading the project as mission director.

Apart from the two women leading the mission at the top positions, the ISRO Chairman, K Sivan said the press conference that 30 percent of the team working on Chandrayaan-2 consist of women.

Here are some facts about the two women leading the mission:

1. Mathayya Vanitha, Project Director

Apart from being the first woman to head a project as director at ISRO, Muthayya Vanitha has served as deputy project director for data systems for Cartosat-1, Oceansat-2 and Megha-Tropiques satellites- the three remote sensing satellites.

The project director of Chandrayaan-2 Mission has also been best woman scientist award back in 2006.

Twitter

¡°Vanitha is an expert in data handling. She was comfortable in her digital/ hardware section and was hesitant to move to a project director role. This role not only involves nearly 18 hours of work a day at its peak, which means many sacrifices, but is also in the national limelight bringing heavy responsibility of its own,¡± said Dr M Annadurai, the project director of Chandrayaan-1.

He spoke highly of Vanitha and also played an instrumental role in convincing Muthayya Vanitha to take up the responsibility of project director of Chandrayaan-2 Moon Mission.

One of the ¡°Rocket Women¡± of India, Ritu Karidhal

She has done M.Sc in Physics from Lucknow University, M. Tech from India Institute of Science in Bangalore. Ritu Karidhal, also known as one of the ¡°Rocket Women¡± of India, has been a mainstay among scientists at ISRO.

Images courtesy: ISRO

Apart from leading the Chandrayaan-2 Moon Mission as Mission Director, Ritu Karidhal was also a part of Mars Orbiter Mission 2013.

She always had the fascination about space, an urge to do something different from a normal trend. Besides being the Mission Director for Chandrayaan-2, Ritu was associated with the Mars Orbiter Mission in 2013.