Who is the ‘Rocket Woman of India’?

The movie ‘Mangalyaan’ portrays the true story of a team of mostly women scientists who put a satellite into orbit around planet Mars.

One of the real-life scientists portrayed in the movie is Dr Ritu Karidhal Srivastava. An aerospace engineer, Ritu was born on April 13, 1975 in Lucknow, UP into a middle-class family.

As a child, she was fascinated by space and spent hours gazing at the sky and dreaming about the stars and planets. She completed her MSc in physics from the University of Lucknow and went on to pursue a PhD in physics. She passed the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineers (GATE) and joined IISc, Bangalore to pursue aerospace engineering. She joined ISRO in 1997 and joined the Mangalyaan-1 team as Deputy Operations Director in 2012. She oversaw the detailing and execution of the craft’s onward autonomy system, in other words the ‘brain of the satellite’, which operated the satellite’s functions independently in space and responded appropriately to malfunctions.

The success of Mangalyaan -1 catapulted ISRO into international stardom. India became the 4th country in the world to reach Mars. Furthermore, it had done it in a record 18 months and at a fraction of the cost of similar international missions. Dr Karidhal received the ISRO ‘Young Scientist Award’ in 2007 from APJ Abdul Kalam, then president of India.

Picture Credit : Google