The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman S Somanath said he would be happy to see more IITians joining the country's space programme and contributing towards nation-building. The top scientist recently gave an address at IIT Bombay, the country's premier engineering institute.
In his 54-minute long speech, he outlined the space agency's future projects - including the human space flight program Gaganyaan, sending human beings to the moon, and creating a moon-based economy - that it aims to execute by 2047. During this address, Somanath said he hopes there will be more IITians joining the space agency.
"All of you are excited about the space now, after the landing of Chandrayaan-3," he said as he began his speech. "But I'm excited more about the possibilities that are there in front of us in the future. And the road has been defined very well now and the type of challenges in front is really exciting me."
Though, he said, he won't be there at ISRO to see all of that because it's going to happen by 2047.
Somanath, under whose watch India scripted cosmic history by successfully landing on the Moon, said that he was expecting the next generation of leaders who are going to take over to do this work.
Addressing the future engineers at IIT Bombay, he said his task was not only to outline the roadmap but also to identify those people and leaders who will be able to execute the tasks, especially those youngsters who will be able to design those things in the coming 25 years. "That's why I am excited to come to IIT," he said.
"In fact, I had given a talk at IIT-Chennai. Though possibly you would have heard my speaking about IITs and their contribution to the space programme. I won't be getting into that domain at all today. But I hope there will be...I would be happy to see more of IITians joining the space programme and contributing towards nation-building," he said.
In October last year, Somanath in an interview said that engineers from IITs were not joining the ISRO due to pay structure. He said our best talents are supposed to be engineers and they are supposed to be IITians. "But, they are not joining ISRO. If we go and try to recruit from IIT, no one joins," he said in an interview with Asianet News.
The ISRO chief said few people think space is important - "such people join". But not many and the percentage is hardly less than 1 per cent or even lower, he had said. In the same interview, Somanath also revealed that his team had once gone to one IIT to recruit engineers but the moment the salary structure was shown in the presentation, 60 per cent of candidates walked out.
"The students who were sitting there saw the highest pay that they could ever get in the ISRO. That was it. After seeing the presentation, 60 per cent of people walked out," Somanath had said.