Chandrayaan-3 project director P Veeramuthuvel to donate Rs 25 lakh award to alma maters
P Veeramuthuvel was among the nine ISRO officials from Tamil Nadu who were felicitated by the Tamil Nadu government in October for their contribution to the field of space research.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientist P Veeramuthuvel (46), the project director of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, has said that he would like to donate the Rs 25 lakh awarded to him by the Tamil Nadu government to the four educational institutes where he studied.
In a letter, Sandhya Venugopal Sharma, additional secretary in the department of space, wrote to A Karthik, principal secretary of the higher education department in Tamil Nadu, saying that Veeramuthuvel would like the amount to be equally distributed among the alumni associations of Elumalai Polytechnic College, Villupuram; Sri Sairam Engineering College, Chennai; National Institute of Technology (NIT), Tiruchirappalli; and Indian Institute of Technology (ITT), Madras.
Veeramuthuvel, the son of a railway employee, was born in Villupuram and is a product of the government school system in Tamil Nadu.
In October, the Tamil Nadu government had felicitated nine “remarkable space scientists from Tamil Nadu” and announced an award of Rs 25 lakh to each of them as a recognition of their contribution to the field of space research. Chief Minister M K Stalin had also hailed Veeramuthuvel’s achievement.
Dr. K. Sivan, Dr. Mayilsamy Annadurai, Dr. V. Narayanan, Thiru. A. Rajarajan, Thiru. M. Sankaran, Thiru. J. Asir Packiaraj, Tmt. M. Vanitha, Tmt. Nigar Shaji, and Dr. Veeramuthuvel have made India and Tamil Nadu proud!
Honoured to felicitate these remarkable space scientists… pic.twitter.com/Bph9xNNxYc
— M.K.Stalin (@mkstalin) October 2, 2023
“We became the fourth country to demonstrate the soft landing onto the moon surface and the first country to go near to the South pole of the moon,” Veeramuthuvel had said after the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the surface of the moon on August 23.