NASA ex-astronaut dubs India’s space missions ‘audacious’

“It was the first time a country ever made it successfully to another planet on first attempt. All of you should be proud of it,” said Smith during a session ‘Lessons Learned from A Skywalker’.

Talking about ISRO successfully soft-landing Chandrayaan-3 on the lunar south pole last year, Smith said, “What makes India’s moon mission spectacular is the fact that in the next 11 months after that, four other missions to the lunar south pole failed: one each by Japan, Russia, and two private US spacecraft.”

Touching upon ISRO’s Gaganyaan mission, he said, “India will send astronauts to space now. I was told that one of them is from Kerala.” He was referring to astronaut-designate Group Captain Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, who hails from Palakkad.

Smith, who recalled his friendship with Indian-born US astronaut Kalpana Chawla, also cited his experience of being rejected four times by NASA when he applied for its astronaut programme. He also recalled a near-death experience at the age of 15 when he had internal bleeding that led to medical flight disqualifications from the Air Force and NASA and four rejections from the Astronaut Corps.

Driving home the message to set audacious goals, he cited the example of SpaceX founder Elon Musk. “A South African immigrant came to NASA 15 years ago and said I can reduce cost of launching a rocket by 50 to 85%… NASA’s reaction was to laugh. Here we are, 15 years later, Musk has done exactly that,” he said.