Shri M Sankaran

Address Following Successful Lunar South Pole Landing of Chandrayaan-3's Vikram

delivered 23 August 2023, Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, India

Audio mp3 of Address       Audio AR-XE mp3 of Address

[AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio]

Thank you very much for the affection that has been displayed today, now. Today, we have achieved what we set out [to] achieve in 2019. It was delayed by about four years, but we have done it.

When Chandrayaan-3 was launched, after the separation of the spacecraft from [the] launch vehicle I said, "I will speak the rest of the things after the soft landing." So, here I will take [a] couple of minutes to tell the tremendous amount of effort that has been put in by the entire project team.

When I say "project team," it is not just only the Project Director [P Veeramuthuvel] and Associate Project Director [Kalpana Kalahasti]. Of course, they are the face of the project. They have been living, sleeping, eating, breathing Chandrayaan for the last four years.

They have been supported by such a large number of people, particularly in their navigation, guidance, and control area propulsion system. This area -- the amount of effort that has been put by people, the number of simulations that have been done, the number of reviews they have gone through, the amount of criticism they faced and overcome [sic] that, it is a -- as a person who has been watching this for the last four years along with them, my heart feels -- my heart goes out for them. The amount of effort is tremendous. That is what ISRO [Indian Space Research Organisation] is all about. That is what our organization has taught us to do.

Now today this success has put us even more higher responsibility, as the Honorable Prime Minister was telling,¹ because we have set the bar now so high. Nothing -- Nothing less than -- Nothing less spectacular than this is going to be inspiring for any -- any of us in the future.

So, as the Honorable Prime Minister mentioned, we'll -- we'll be now looking at putting the man in space, putting a spacecraft around Venus, and landing a craft in Mars.

Work on all these activities are [sic] going on for [a] few years. And this success today will inspire us and will spur us to take those efforts even more strongly, so that we will make our country proud again and again and again.

Thank you very much for every one of you who have directly or indirectly participated in this mission, encouraged us, intentionally or unintentionally, helped us in all...for every -- every one of you a big thank you because even -- even a casual remark, an unintended point can -- can help a person who is striving to reach a goal. The person who is making that remark may not have meant it that way, but sometimes it can ignite.² In fact, that's why I said that even unintended help is -- is very, very, very welcome and we are very, very thankful for that.³

Thank you Team ISRO for supporting all of us, and the amount of affection I -- we received when this mission came into this final stage, the number of people who gave us confidence that nothing can go wrong. And this is going to be successful. The amount -- In fact I was not that much confident because we have seen [a] couple of times issues. Because I -- I know every well as a -- as a person who has been in doing this in this domain for 36 years, I know there are thousands of things any of -- can any time go wrong and derail.

But so many of the people because that I only see as the reflection we have put -- that people are so, so, so happy to see this effort and they want us to succeed. It is not that we are -- that they know that we are going to succeed. The people want us to succeed.

So thank you very much for everyone for your love and affection. We'll continue to do our best and make our flag fly, ISRO's as well as India's flag fly high.

Thank you very much.

Page Created: 8/27/23

U.S. Copyright Status: Text = Uncertain. Audio = Creative Commons (Reuse Allowed)