Meet Nigar Shaji, a woman ISRO scientist who helmed Aditya-L1 mission

Aditya L1's flight towards the Sun on Saturday is the culmination of the hard work of a number of people under its Project Director Nigar Shaji. Besides producing one stellar performance after another, ISRO has also emerged as a perfect platform to showcase India's women power.

With 35 years of service in ISRO, Shaji has made illustrious contributions to the Indian Remote Sensing, communication and interplanetary satellite programmes at various responsibilities, sources in the space agency said.

Niger Shaji is Project Director for Aditya-L1 mission, India’s mission to the Sun. She was also the Associate Project Director of Resourcesat-2A, which is the Indian Remote Sensing Satellite for National Resource Monitoring and management. She has authored several papers on image compression, system engineering among others.


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A native of Shengottai in Tamil Nadu, the 59-year-old Shaji did her schooling in a government school there.

A bright student – she stood district first in her 10th standard and school first in her 12th standard.

After completing her engineering degree at a college in Tirunelveli, Shaji completed an M.Tech. from the Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, and then joined the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

Over the years, she was involved in various projects, and the responsibility of heading Aditya-L1 came to her about eight years ago.

Also read: Aditya L1 spacecraft launched successfully, now en route to Sun-Earth L1 point. ISRO says mission accomplished

"I have been heading this complex project for eight years. It was a challenging project. To place the spacecraft in the halo orbit itself is a major challenge. Further the payloads were also first of its kind," Shaji told IANS.

She said her husband, a mechanical engineer, is working in Dubai, son a Ph.D is working in Netherlands and daughter is a qualified doctor and is studying post graduation.

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It may be recalled that two women played a key role in the Chandrayaan-2 mission viz., the Project Director M.Vanitha and the Mission Director Ritu Karidhal Srivastava.

Similarly, in the case of Chandrayaan-3, Kalpana, Deputy Director played a key role.

(With inputs from agencies)