Growing up in the early 2000s, the stories of astronauts Rakesh Sharma, Kalpana Chawla, and Sunita Williams (an American astronaut of Indian origin) were woven into my childhood textbooks. Later, as a teenager, I discovered Ravish Malhotra, another pioneer whose name deserved wider recognition but never received it. After these icons, there has been a long gap. An entire generation of children grew up without any Indian launching into space. The sense of scientific pride associated with human spaceflight faded over the years, even as the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) achieved remarkable success in uncrewed missions, placing satellites and… […] continue reading