After meeting Praggnanandhaa and his family at his residence in Chennai on Monday, Somanath said, “We are proud we have a Pragyan (rover) on the Moon, and he is Praggnanandhaa on the ground…what we did for India on the Moon, he has accomplished on the land.”
“Praggnanandhaa will inspire young people to take science, engineering and technology to make India a very proud and powerful nation,” he added.
Hoping that Praggnanandhaa will “scale new heights” like Viswanathan Anand did in the chess world, Somanath said, “We are very proud of him for his accomplishments (his world ranking, 15 now). I believe in the coming days, he will come to the top.”
Speaking about the Gaganyaan programme, Somanath said the maiden TV-D1 test flight is scheduled for October 21 (Saturday). He said three more test vehicle missions will be launched after the TV-D1 test flight. “After the first test vehicle flight on October 21, we have planned for three more test missions, D2, D3 and D4. We will hold thorough tests during the test flight sequence,” Somanath said a day earlier in Rameswaram.
Watch: What happened when ISRO Chief S Somanath went to Chess prodigy Praggnanandhaa’s house in Chennai
Updating about the Aditya-L1 mission, Somanath said the spacecraft, which is on a 110-day-long journey to the Lagrange point L1, is expected to reach the intended destination by “middle of January”. “It takes almost another 70-75 days further to reach. By the middle of January, it will reach there. After that, we will make some corrections to make it enter into the halo orbit at the L1 point. After that instruments will be switched on and it will start doing the scientific data streaming. Currently, everything is very healthy on Aditya L1,” the Isro chief said.
