New Isro chairman: The brain behind India's cryogenic success

FROM CHANDRAYAAN to the latest Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX) and the upcoming Gaganyaan missions, the Indian Space Research Organisation is "going through a successful phase", new Isro chairman V Narayanan said on Wednesday.

- AMITABH SINHA & ANONNA DUTT

Narayanan, appointed on Tuesday to succeed S Somanath who will complete his tenure on January 14, is one of the key persons behind India's self-reliance in cryogenic technology which powers all the modern-day heavy-lift rockets being used for space missions.

He is also the person who diagnosed the problems that led to the failure of Chandrayaan-2, and recommended the corrections to be made for the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3.

Narayanan, who joined Isro in 1984, has spent almost his entire career at the Thiruvananthapuram-based Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), developing and improving propulsion designs of rocket engines and satellites.

He has been the director of LPSC since 2018. Under his leadership, LPSC is currently developing the Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV), an even more powerful rocket that would give shape to India's ambition of setting up its own space station and sending humans to the moon.