As India became the first country to land a probe near the south pole region of the Moon on August 23, one man, who has been at the centre of all the limelight is Chandrayaan 3 mission director P Veeramuthuval. Born in Tamil Nadu’s Viluppuram district in 1976, Veeramuthuvel had a middle-class upbringing. His father worked as a technician in Indian railways.
He did his schooling at the railway school in Villupuram and then earned a diploma in mechanical engineering from a local polytechnic college. After the mechanical engineering diploma, Veerumuthuvel, who has been living the dream of being a scientist at the Indian Space Research Foundation (ISRO) since childhood, went to a private college to complete his bachelor’s degree in engineering. From there, he went to NIT Trichy for his Master of Engineering studies.
After post-graduation, Veeramuthuvel took a senior engineer’s job at Lakshmi Engineering Works in Coimbatore. Later, he joined Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Bangalore. It was 2014 when his childhood dream came true and he joined ISRO and worked on various projects.
Veeramuthuvel was ISRO’s point of contact with NASA during the Chandrayaan 2 mission. In 2019, he succeeded Vanitha to become the project director of the Chandrayaan 3 mission and played a pivotal role in its landing.
When Chandrayaan 3 landed on the lunar surface, Veerumuthuvel made the announcement and said “We have become the first country to land near the south pole region of the Moon.”
India became the fourth country to make a soft landing on the Moon and the first to land near the little-explored South Pole region. Currently, the Pragyan rover is roving on the lunar surface and conducting its experiments. The rover will conduct in-situ experiments on the lunar surface for two weeks.