The Diamond Jubilee of India’s first sounding rocket launch from Thumba in Kerala coincides with the year 2023 which saw the historic twin feats of Chandrayaan-3 and Aditya-L1 missions, said Union Minister of State for Space Jitendra Singh.
The year 2023 will also go down in history as the year when Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared the 23rd of August, the day Chandrayaan-3 landed on the Moon, as ‘National Space Day’, he said.

Jitendra Singh, who is also the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology was addressing the Commemoration of the 60th year of the First Sounding Rocket Launch at a function at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launch Station (TERLS) on Saturday.

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On the occasion, Jitendra Singh witnessed the ceremonial launch of a similar Sounding Rocket undertaken from the Space pod where the original launch took place on November 21, 1963. In a symbolic gesture, the countdown was announced by Pramod P Kale, who read out the countdown way back on the first launch 60 years ago.

Later, addressing the media, Jitendra Singh said, the success of Chandrayaan-3 and Aditya-L1 missions reiterates India’s indigenous capabilities and vindicates the dream that Dr Vikram Sarabhai, the first Chairman of ISRO and the founding father of India’s Space Programme, saw six decades ago.

“It is also a vindication of the dream of Vikram Sarabhai, who might have been short of resources, but not short of confidence because he had faith in himself and in India’s inherent potential and inherent acumen,” said Singh.
Building on the success of Indian Space initiatives which got a boost in the last 4 to 5 years, including the recent Chandrayan-3 and Aditya L1 Missions, Singh said, PM Modi has asked ISRO to aim for India’s first manned Space Mission ‘Gaganyaan’ by 2025, lunar sample return mission, ‘Bharatiya Antariksha Station’ (Indian Space Station) by 2035 and the first Indian to set foot on the Moon by 2040.

Stating that India’s Space programme is now at an equal pace with the world’s leading Space agencies, Jitendra Singh said that NASA might have been the first to land on the moon, but it was India’s Chandrayaan-1 that discovered water molecules on the Moon and now Chandrayaan-3 has for the first time landed on the South Pole of the moon.