"Didn't Go Home After Landing": Ex ISRO Chief's Chandrayaan-3 Cheers

Nearly four years after the Chandrayaan-2 setback drove him to tears, former chief of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) K Sivan was ecstatic when Chandrayaan-3 made a touchdown on the lunar surface last evening, bringing cheers to 1.4 billion Indians.

Speaking to news agency ANI, Mr Sivan expressed the happiness and excitement inside the ISRO control room when the Vikram lander landed on the lunar surface.

"...Finally our prayers came true. After landing, we did not come home. I was sitting in the control room till the rover came out of the lander. I left only after seeing the rover move on the surface of the moon. I reached home late at night," he said.

Following the successful landing last evening, Mr Sivan had said, "For this, we have been waiting for the last four years. This success is sweet news for us and for the entire nation."

Mr Sivan was at the helm of the Indian space agency when Chandrayaan-2 attempted a moon landing near the southern pole in 2019. The spacecraft was launched on July 22 and was scheduled to land on September 6. During the landing attempt, the lander deviated from its planned trajectory, lost contact with the mission control room and made a crash landing on the moon's surface. ISRO had then attributed this to a software glitch.

The setback hit the ISRO team hard as their hard work on the project did not achieve the desired results. A defining memory of the sombre occasion was Mr Sivan breaking down as Prime Minister Narendra Modi comforted him.

In the run-up to Chandrayaan-3, current ISRO chairman S Somanath had detailed how the space agency had focused on what went wrong in 2019 to ensure a successful landing this time.