PM gave us the vision that an Indian must land on moon by 2040: ISRO chairman

Somanath said, “After the Chandrayaan-3 launch, I had the opportunity to meet the PM and look at the vision he outlined for our space programme… He told us ‘you need to dream bigger and have a larger vision for the space programme’. He said, ‘Somanath, you don’t even understand the type of impact this success made for our nation’. I think he can understand the impact that it made and said that the type of impact it created is not only in science and technology domains, but in the minds of young people.”

He added: “Today, we have the confidence to execute high technology projects… it resonated not only across the country but equally outside… (The PM) gave us the vision that an Indian must land on the moon by 2040. He said that we must make a space station for ourselves and it must be achieved by 2035 and for that we need to do many things, like going to moon again, going to other planetary bodies like Venus and Mars… continue exploration in a manner which is Indian…”

Somanath said that while ISRO typically sees a “very modest investment from the government”, he sees promise and opportunities for youth with privatisation of space technology and introduction of space reforms.

“Today, in space technology domain, we have become world leader… though investment in space continues to remain a modest number from the government… it is typically half-a-percent of our budget… with such a low investment, we are about to create the capacity and capability to build our own spacecrafts and launchers, launch from our own soil and achieve whatever we want… It’s fantastic,” he added.

“The space sector reforms… open up opportunities for young people. You need not be a part of ISRO, you can be part of the ecosystem that is getting created — start-ups, industries… now you are allowing non-governmental entities to come to the space sector and work in every domain… Such opportunities are coming because the policies of the government are encouraging such industries.”

Encouraging students to tide over failures and come out successful, Somanath said: “When we are lauded for success of Chandrayaan-3, I always look back… at the failures… This year itself, we were successful in overcoming three major failures… Chandrayaan-3 success came after the failure of Chandrayaan-2, four years ago… We had a failed GSLV rocket (launch)… we understood that failure, corrected (it) and became successful this year. Same is the case with the new rocket we designed, the small satellite launch vehicle (SSLV)… the first launch last year was a failure, this year we corrected (it) made (the lauch) successful…”

Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, who is also the chairman of PDEU board, was scheduled to attend the convocation but could not. In a virtual message to the students, he said he was “suddenly invited as a special invitee” at the COP28 summit in Dubai. Noting that in the next 25 years, India will witness an “unprecedented explosion of economic growth” and will become a USD 40 trillion economy by 2047, Ambani emphasised that to “fuel this growth, the country will need enormous amount of clean, green energy that won’t choke mother nature for the sake of human progress”.