Chennai: The Union Government has appointed distinguished space scientist and LPSC Vaiamala Director V Narayanan as the next Chairman of the Indian Space Reasearch Organisation (ISRO) and Secretary of the Department of Space.
It was announced by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet on Tuesday
evening, according to reports received here.
Mr Narayanan will replace incumbent Chief S Somanath from January 14. The tenure of Mr Narayanan’s appointment will be for a period of two years, or until further orders, whichever comes earlier, a notification issued by the Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions said.
Normally the Director of VSSC would be made the ISRO Chairman and perhaps for the first time the LPSC Director was elevated to the post.
It may be noted that Mr Somanath, who helmed ISRO since January 22 after elevated from the post of VSSC, Thiruvananthapuram Director, has several success to his credit that included the historic third Lunar Mission Chandrayaan-3 which made a soft landing on the hitherto unexplored South Polar region of Moon thereby making India the first country to achieve this feat, the Aditya-L1 first mission to the sun and the latest being the first ever spae docking experiment technology demonstration by launching two SpadeX satellites Chaser and Target onboarded PSLV-C60 on December 30, 2024, propelling India to become the fourth country after US, Russia and China to achieve this feat.
The space docking will take place from 0800 hrs on January 8, ISRO said in a post on X.
“Watch the SpaDeX Docking Event Programme. Date: 9th January 2025. Time: 8:00 AM onwards”, it said.c22
