Students savour the Chandrayaan-3 touchdown: Felt pride, got goosebumps in last 15 mins

An ISRO image of the Chandrayaan-3 landing site taken after touchdown. One of the four legs of the lander is visible on the right

Nearly 2,000 km away, at Physics department of Pandit Ravishankar Shukla University in Chhattisgarh’s Raipur, students of Physics and Astrophysics department chanted slogans such as “ISRO Salam Tujhe (We salute you, ISRO)”, “Vande Mataram”, “Bharat Mata Ki Jai”. Department head Nameeta Brahme said, “It is an extremely proud moment for our department — our alumni, Vivek Agrawal, is a scientist at ISRO and his lab has contributed to this mission. Our students see this as their own victory…”

Kanchan Tiwari, 27, a research scholar in Material Science, said, “We got goosebumps in the last 15 minutes of landing, which is seen as danger zone, when anything can happen. As a student, I see it as an opportunity to get more jobs in this field…”

Scientists in the control room of ISRO headquarters celebrate after the successful Moon landing on Wednesday. (PTI)

At the Regional Science Centre, Bhopal, director Saket Singh Kaurav began his countdown and paused, waiting for the landing announcement from ISRO. A few tense moments later, the otherwise sombre corridors of the centre saw flag-waving schoolchildren burst out in joy as the landing was confirmed.

Abhineet Singh, who carried his 15-month-old son Ivan to the stage, said, “I wanted him to be a part of this moment. This is history.”

In Bhubaneswar, the Central Tool Room and Training Centre (CTTC), which has manufactured and supplied several critical components for the mission, had organised a special screening for its technicians. Emotions ran high when the lander successfully made soft landing. CTTC GM, L Rajsekhar, called it a moment for India that will open up new opportunity for further research.

At exactly that moment — 6.04 pm — students of Guwahati Refinery Higher Secondary School streamed out of the hot, packed room they had been watching the landing in. It was time to celebrate. Ragini Sarma, a class IX student, said, “It felt like we all played a part in this landing in some way.”

After Assam government ordered all schools to live-stream the landing, teachers at the school put together their limited resources to screen it for students. The school’s only projector was put to use, and students of classes IX to XII were asked to return at 5 pm after school ended for the day. Kaushik Sarma, 24, the school’s science teacher, had stood at the centre of the classroom, watching keenly. “I got goosebumps,” he said. It was a reaction scores of Indians underwent Wednesday evening.

ENS Inputs: Raipur, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram