ISRO Chief Somnath offers prayers at Gujarat’s Somnath temple

It's our good luck as it was our effort to soft-land on the Moon. It is the blessing of Lord Somnath that we were able to accomplish the mission. We have to work on other missions as well so we need strength and blessings," said the ISRO chief Somnath

Veraval: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chief S Somnath on Thursday offered prayers at the famed Somnath Mahadev temple. Somnath’s visit follows the success of India’s mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-3.

“It’s our good luck as it was our effort to soft-land (Chandrayaan 3) on the Moon. It is the blessing of Lord Somnath that we were able to accomplish the mission. We have to work on other missions as well so we need strength and blessings,” said the ISRO chief after his visit to the Somnath Mahadev temple.

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Following the triumphant soft landing of Chandrayaan 3 on the lunar South Pole, the ISRO chief had visited the Pournami Kavu Bhadrakali temple in Kerala. He has also visited the Goddess Chengalamma temple in Sullurpeta town in Andhra Pradesh among others.

Asked about his visits to temples Somnath had earlier told reporters at the Pournamikavu Bhadrakali Temple in Kerala said that science and spirituality are two different realms and that both need not be mixed.

I explore the moon, I explore the inner space. It is a part of the journey of his life to explore science and spirituality, he said adding that he goes to many temples in his quest to find the meaning of our existence and our journey in this cosmos. “I come to many temples, read scriptures, and try to find the meaning of art and our journey in this cosmos. It is a part of the culture that we built to explore the inner and outer self,” he said “For the outer I do Science and for the inner self I come to temples,” Somnath told ANI after offering prayers at Pournamikavu Bhadrakali Temple in Thiruvananthapuram on August 27.

Meanwhile on Wednesday addressing the 50th national management convention of All India Management Association (AIMA) the ISRO Chairman said he sees substantial potential in the Indian space during its Amritkaal, particularly in the application, services, and manufacturing domain.

When we reach our Amritkaal, the share of our economy in space will be substantially higher and it will come out in the secondary and tertiary sectors, and not by building rockets and satellites but by building applications, services, and manufacturing in India, Somanath said. He cited examples such as hyperlocal weather update services, map services, remote sensing, and communication applications, among others which have tremendous use cases.

The ISRO chief has also announced the country’s mission to Venus. He said that payloads of the future mission to Venus have already been developed.

More recent Venus missions include ESAs Venus Express (which orbited from 2006 until 2016) and Japan’s Akatsuki Venus Climate Orbiter (orbiting since 2016). NASAs Parker Solar Probe has made multiple flybys of Venus. On February 9, 2022, NASA announced the spacecraft had captured its first visible light images of the surface of Venus from space during its February 2021 flyby.

ISRO has also launched the Aditya-L1 Mission to study the Sun in unprecedented detail.