KOCHI: The ISRO’s new solid propellant plant with 200 tonnes propellant booster will be commissioned in a couple of years at Sriharikota, Satish Dhawan Space Centre director M Chandrathan said here on Wednesday.
The new facility will be a boost to the Mars programme, Chandradathan said while delivering the K Unnikrishnan Memorial lecture organised by the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers.
He said that India’s space mission was to concentrate on the resource building for the country and how best we can study the country’s resources. He said that Chandrayaan success was of textbook accuracy and it was done because each and every person right from chairman G Madhavan Nair down the ladder worked with the mission’s success in mind.
``When we are in the campaign mode, there is no such thing as 24 hours. There is no need for any specific motivation as everybody is highly focused on a single target,’’ he said.
Speaking on `Chandrayaan-1 and team building’, Chandradathan said that the secret of success remained in moving with your people and winning their trust by being there for them. ``Your concern for the other person will ensure that they would support you as a team leader,’’ he said. He said that delegating of responsibility is something most people at the senior levels don’t do. He said that he had known the late Unnikrishnan in his college days when the latter had scored the first rank in the first batch of chemical engineers at the Government Engineering College, Thrissur. In his inaugural address, FACT chairman and managing director George Sleeba paid rich tributes to Unnikrishnan who he said was a great leader and knowledge executive. He recalled the times he had spent with Unnikrishnan who passed away 16 years ago.
In his presidential address, Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers (Kochi centre) chairman R Venugopal said that the Kochi centre had won the best regional centre award at Chandigarh. He announced that the organisation would start an expert series lecture every month.