S. Somanath

Sreedhara Panicker Somanath (born July 1963) is an Indian aerospace engineer served as the chairman of ISRO. Under his chairpersonship, ISRO carried out the third Indian lunar exploration mission named Chandrayaan-3. The lander named Vikram and the rover named Pragyan landed near the lunar south pole region on 23 August 2023 at 18:04 IST, making India the first country to successfully land a spacecraft near the lunar south pole and the fourth country to demonstrate soft landing on the Moon. Somanath served as the director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram and director of Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), Thiruvananthapuram. Somanath is known for his contributions to launch vehicle design, particularly in the areas of launch vehicle systems engineering, structural design, structural dynamics, and Pyrotechnics. After concluding his tenure at ISRO, Somanath assumed the role of chancellor at Chanakya University, a liberal arts institution based in Bengaluru.