Mysore/Mysuru: Senior ISRO Scientist from Bengaluru, Nandini Harinath, said that the lessons learnt from the mistakes of Chandrayaan-2 Mission helped in the success of Chandrayaan-3.

She was delivering a talk on “Chandrayaan-3: An insight” as part of Thathaiah Memorial lecture series at Thathaiah  Anathalaya on Narayana Shastri road here yesterday.

Pointing out that every scientist of ISRO has his/her own responsibility as the country was spending crores of rupees on Chandrayaan and other space missions, Nandini said  the photographs of the moon’s surface captured in the earlier projects, was key for the success of Chandrayaan-3 Mission.

“Persistent efforts and intelligence is the secret behind the success of ISRO’s missions. Only NASA of America has the rockets that have the capacity to go directly to Mars. But India showed its shrewdness in Mars mission which was a big success,” she noted.

Maintaining that ISRO has grown step by step in its decades of existence, the senior ISRO Scientist said that earlier, the Satellites were only capable of taking pictures of objects that were 1-km in size. But now technology has grown so much that Satellites can identify and take pictures of objects as small as 25 cms, she said adding that space research is increasingly becoming useful for human development.

Continuing, she said that our satellites used to go to 500 kms of earth’s orbit but now the satellites can reach upto 36,000 kms. Subsequently, the satellites have entered the Mars orbit. Now, ISRO’s Aditya project is becoming a milestone, she said.

The Anathalaya President C.V. Gopinath, who is also a  retired Additional Secretary of the Government of India, said that M. Venkatakrishnaiah, who was popularly known as Thathaiah  established the Anathalaya. Stating that Thathaiah  worked for empowerment of women, he said that the Anathalaya has a history of over 130 years.

Pointing out that children used to fondly call Venkatakrishnaiah as Thathaiah, Gopinath said that Thathaiah  memorial lecture series was started in 2023.

Nandini Harinath and her husband Harinath, also an ISRO scientist, were feted on the occasion. Anathalaya Vice-President N.V. Dinesh, Secretary H. Ashwathnarayan,  member Dr. S. Murali, who is also the President of the city’s Maharaja Institute of Technology and others were present at the programme.