India's Moon Stars: 'Shiv' The Project Director Of Chandrayaan-3

Meet P Veeramuthuvel, the Project Director of Chandrayaan-3 at the UR Rao Satellite Centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Bengaluru, has spent the past four years doing nothing but perfecting India's Moon mission. Mr Veeramuthuvel, 47, has been working with ISRO for 20 years. He did BTech from Madras University. He was fully involved with Chandrayaan-2 and knew the insides of that mission, and was the one who helped the failure analysis committee of ISRO figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. He said he was given a free hand in Chandryaan-3 to conduct all the necessary ground tests and that is what led to the success of Chandrayaan-3. In this exclusive discussion with NDTV's Pallava Bagla, he goes around the life-size lander Vikram and the rover Pragyan to explain how they scripted history. We call him 'Shiv', taking a cue from Prime Minister Narendra Modi referring to 'Shiv and Shakti'. He credits ISRO chief S Somanath and Team ISRO for standing by him during his most difficult times.