All for This One Drop of Water

It ended like a Bollywood movie. For some weeks everyone thought that it was over with “limited success” and then came this Baazigar moment when two separate press briefings-- one in Florida and other in Bengaluru, announced one of the most important findings in the moon exploration history – some drops of water on lunar surface!

This may be one of the numerous important discoveries for the West. But for us, it’s the defining moment in the history of our technology. Akin to what Sputnik launch meant to Russia or what Apollo 11 meant to the USA. Discovery of water on moon by our own Chandrayaan (in collaboration with NASA), has caught the imagination of entire nation. It is the first major manifestation of our technological capabilities towards meaningful discoveries for entire mankind making ISRO the star of the day.

In a true movie style, ISRO’s tryst with destiny started in the dark ages of 1960s – in a workshop shed in Banaglore with extremely limited resources. In its early days, scientists used bicycles totransport rockets which would launch a satellite into outer space! For ISRO it’s Bollywood-ly journey from its early days to the days of Chandrayaan for ISRO. In right sense, the project Chandrayaan started not in 2005 but in 1969 and it took bicycles, workshop sheds, 40 years and one million ton of sweat to make our mark on moon!

Such type of things happen only in movies. A masala movie on this topic might have been over by now … But for ISRO a sequel is due :)