K Kasturirangan (1940-2025): Unlimited by Space

Even as a young boy K Kasturirangan, who passed away on April 25 at the age of 84, was awed by the grandeur of space, and his path was more or less decided when an uncle told him that if he wanted to understand the cosmos it would have to be by the indirect route of physics and maths. Coming from a Tamil Brahmin family in Kerala, it was in Mumbai that he took up physics as a specialisation. This, in turn, brought him into contact for his doctoral work with Dr Vikram Sarabhai, who also introduced him to the joys of experimental science. After starting ISRO, Sarabhai convinced Kasturirangan to not go to the US for further studies and join the agency instead. He would go on to spend his entire working there, beginning in 1971 as part of a team that made a 40-kilo satellite called Rohini, to becoming the chairman of ISRO from 1994 to 2003.

If ISRO’s vessels have gone to the Moon and Mars in recent times, much of the foundation of that was laid by Kasturirangan. As Edward Stone, former president of International Academy of Astronautics, would write in the foreword to the book Space and Beyond, a collection of Kasturirangan’s lectures, ‘Dr Kasturirangan provided key leadership in building India’s cost-effective, end-to-end space programme, including launch vehicles for both polar (PSLV) and geosynchronous (GSLV) orbits and satellites for communication, remote sensing, and scientific research. He prepared India for its first exploration of the moon and planets.’

Even after leaving ISRO, as a member of the Rajya Sabha and the Planning Commission, Kasturirangan remained active in public life, giving direction to Indian space and technology. Altogether he worked closely with five prime ministers. In 1999, during a press conference, a reporter asked the then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, whether India would do a lunar mission. Kasturirangan was seated nearby and Vajpayee asked him take the question. His reply was the planning was still at a preliminary stage and romantics like the prime minister could answer it better for now. Vajpayee’s retort with a joke: could something so pockmarked be romantic! In four years, however, on Independence Day 20023, Vajpayee would announce the initiation of the Chandrayaan mission. Fifteen days later Kasturirangan retired from ISRO. But in 2008, when an Indian spacecraft first orbited the moon, his shadow was all over it.

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