Karnataka - Bangalore

Chandrayaan brings city a new prefix

Bangalore: It was with a curious black and white photograph that Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) G. Madhavan Nair recently began a presentation on the history of the space organisation: the picture captured a cyclist carrying on his pillion a small sounding rocket to its launch pad.

These were the startlingly modest beginnings of an organisation that has come to establish for itself a place in an exclusive international club with the launch of Chandrayaan-I in October — while also bringing to the Information Technology city a new prefix, that of space research.

If the moon mission was a testimony to Bangalore’s expertise in science (drawing as it did from institutions such as Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and the Indian Institute of Science) it also brought to the city the state-of-the-art Indian Deep Space Network with its giant tracking antenna — and of course, placed Byalalu village for the first time on the international map and in media focus.

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