Chennai, Jan 15: Senior rocket scientist and the Director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) S.Somanath has assumed charge as Secretary, Department of Space and the next Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
He succeeds Dr K Sivan, who retired from service. ISRO said Mr Somanath assumed charge after a four-year stint as VSSC Director. He has also served as the Director of Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), Valiamala, for two-and-a-half years.
Mr Somanath obtained his B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from TKM College of Engineering, Kollam, and Masters in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, specializing in structures, dynamics and control with a Gold Medal. He joined VSSC in 1985 and was a team leader for the Integration of PSLV
during the early phases.
Mr Somanath is an expert in the area of system engineering of Launch vehicles.
His contributions in PSLV and GSLV-MkIII launch vehicles were in their overall
architecture, propulsion stages design, structural and structural dynamics designs,
separation systems, vehicle integration, and integration procedures development.
He is the recipient of the ‘Space Gold Medal’ from the Astronautical Society of India.
He received the ‘Merit Award” and ‘Performance Excellence award’ from ISRO and
a ‘Team excellence award’ for GSLV Mk-III development.
He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), a Fellow of
the Aeronautical Society of India (AeSI), Astronautical Society of India (ASI), and
a Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA). He
is in the bureau of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) and a recipient
of the National Aeronautics Prize from the Aeronautical Society of India (ASI).
