Chandrayaan-3 project director P Veeramuthuvel to donate Rs 25 lakh award money to alma matars

ISRO scientist P Veeramuthuvel will be donating Rs 25 lakh, which was awarded to him by the Tamil Nadu government recently, India Today has reported. Veeramuthuvel was the project director of Chandrayaan-3. He will donate the amount to the alumni associations of four institutes in Tamil Nadu where he pursued his education.

The award money will be donated equally to the alumni associations of four institutes - Elumalai Polytechnic College in Villupuram, Sri Sairam Engineering College, NIT- Trichy, and IIT-Madras. Veeramuthuvel obtained his MTech from the Department of Production Engineering, NIT Tiruchirappalli in the year 2003.

Last month, the Tamil Nadu government felicitated the ISRO scientists from the state for their contribution to the field of space research. They were given a cash award of Rs 25 lakhs each.

On August 23, India scripted history as ISRO's ambitious third Moon mission Chandrayaan-3's Lander Module (LM) touched down on the lunar surface, making it only the fourth country to accomplish the feat, and first to reach the uncharted south pole of Earth's only natural satellite.

A Tamil Nadu-born scientist at ISRO, Veeramuthuvel was the Project Director for the Chandrayaan-3 mission. After a successful landing, the project director said that the entire mission operations right from launch till landing happened flawlessly as per the timeline.

In October, a campus lecture was held at NIT Tiruchirappalli, where Veeramuthuvel was invited. While interacting with the students, the scientist spoke on future plans of ISRO and said the soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 is a stepping stone for further missions in sending humans to space.