A Village Boy’s Dream Fulfilled

New Delhi: He was beaming when the Vikram Lander part of the historic Chandrayaan-3 mission touched down on the moon surface on August 23 last year. But his smile was brighter as he received today his PhD degree at the 61st Convocation of IIT-Madras.

S Somanath, an aerospace engineer and chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, is now ‘Dr’ Somanath. Somanath in Sanskrit means ‘Lord of the Moon’ and the ISRO chief, who led India’s big mission to the moon, is now over the moon after his doctorate.

Dr Somanath already had nearly a dozen honorary PhDs, thanks to his work as lead developer for India’s heavy launcher, the Launch Mark Vehicle Mark-3, and his role in successfully spearheading the feather-like touchdown of the Vikram lander nearer the South Pole of the moon. But earning a PhD through research is a different ball game and a bigger cause for celebration.

After receiving his doctorate, Dr Somanath said getting the degree from a prestigious institution like IIT-Madras is a “great honour”. “As a village boy, even though I was a topper, I did not have the courage to take the entrance exam of IIT. But I had a dream that one day I would graduate from here. I got my Master’s degree from the illustrious Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru and now the PhD has been awarded by the IIT-Madras,” he said.

Speaking to NDTV, Dr Somanath said, “PhD is always difficult, especially from a reputed institution like IIT-Madras. It has been a long journey. I registered many years back, but the research subject was very close to my heart. It was related to vibration isolators, which I started as an engineer in an ISRO project decades ago. The topic remained alive in my mind, and I worked on it for so many years.”

“I must tell you that this PhD is a result of my last 35 years of work plus the effort taken in the last phase of work in converting that work into this PhD and publishing papers, attending seminars, and then defending it. You are seeing only the last phase, but it is a long journey,” he said.

The top scientist said that even during his stint as director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center (VSSC), he did not pay attention to this goal. “But then I felt that I must pay attention to all such passions that I have in my life, and I must try to fulfill them.”

Dr Somanath did his schooling from St. Augustine’s High School at Aroor in Kerala’s Allapuzha district before moving to Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam. He received his graduate degree in mechanical engineering from Thangal Kunju Musaliar College of Engineering, in Kollam. He joined ISRO in 1985 and rose to become its chairman.

His bio-sketch at ISRO says that as Secretary of DoS, he piloted the National Space Policy, facilitated IN-SPACe activation, engagement of ISRO with NGPE and start-ups in space sector and enabled NSIL to aggregate user demands, take up commercial activities, including Launch vehicle production and spacecraft operations.

Chandrayaan-3 landing near the South Pole of Moon was a great success under his leadership. The Aditya-L1, XpoSat, INSAT-3DS, NVS-01, Oceansat, GSAT-24 and commercial PSLV & LVM3-OneWeb missions are some of the recent successes. Under his leadership Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) and Test Vehicle (TV) were developed and landing experiments of the Re-usable Launch Vehicle (RLV-LEX) was accomplished.

He is now playing a crucial role in the architecture of the Gaganyaan programme for sending Indians to space and achieved the first Test vehicle flight for mission abort demonstration. Currently, he is focused on the Space Vision-2047 missions that include Gaganyaan, Chandrayaan-series and other exploration missions, Bharatiya Antariksha Station development and human mission to Moon.

According to IIT-Madras, about 2,636 scholars were awarded their degrees at the convocation this year and this includes graduate students who got BTech degrees. Nobel Laureate Prof Brian K Kobilka was the chief guest at the occasion.