Lucknow to Chandrayaan: Meet India's rocket woman Ritu Karidhal leading India's historic lunar mission

Ritu Karidhal, dubbed the "Rocket Woman of India," is in charge of Chandrayaan 3, the nation's ambitious lunar space project, which was launched on Friday at 2:35 p.m. from Sriharikota's Satish Dhawan Space Center.

Popularly known as the "rocket woman" of India, Srivastava is from Lucknow. She has an impressive track record, having been a part of the Mangalyaan mission and serving as the deputy director of the Mars mission. Shrivastava is an expert in Aerospace, having studied at the prestigious Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru. She pursued a Bachelor's degree in Physics from Lucknow University. Later, she received her ME in Aerospace Engineering from Indian Institute of Science (IISc).

Srivastava joined ISRO in 1997 and was the Mission Director of Chandrayaan-2 and the Deputy Operations Director of Mangalyaan. She has published over 20 papers in journals both national and international.


Growing up, she had a collection of paper cuttings of ISRO and NASA. Karidhal has always been interested in space and aimed at doing something unique.

Moreover, she has also backed many awards to her name like ‘ISRO Young Scientist Award’ by former President APJ Abdul Kalam, ‘ISRO Team Award for MOM (2015)’, ‘ASI Team Award’, ‘Women Achievers in Aerospace, (2017)’ by Society of Indian Aerospace Technologies & Industries (SIATI).

The Chandrayaan-3 mission, which costs Rs 615 crore, will take around 50 days to complete and land on the southern pole of the moon.