“Opinion | Why Mission Chandrayaan-3 is a giant leap for India”, First Post, August 23, 2023:
“Chandrayaan-3 is not just a mission for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) but a mission for India. A counterfactual might be thrown at this assertion that any ISRO mission is an ipso-facto Indian mission too. Correct, but if we consider all previous missions of ISRO to be equal, then this mission would come off as first among the equals. The reason being the miss by a whisker in ISRO’s last attempt when Chandrayaan-2 failed to achieve its intended objectives has lived in the public memory for the last four years.
Public memory is a very strong emotion and, in this case, it’s the collective memory of 1.4 billion people. The memory is made up of re-energised hope, an acute sense of nationalism, ideals of patriotism and a strong pride with respect to ISRO as an institution. This is despite the fact that between Chandrayaan-2 and Chandrayaan-3, four years have passed. These four years were in no sense ordinary by any stretch of the imagination.
The world went through a global pandemic with millions of lives lost. Despite this, an ordinary Indian still sees hope for himself in the success of India’s space mission. Very few things in India unite people together like nothing else. Success in outer space is one such thing…..”
Read the full article at Firstpost.com
