Indian scientist N. Valarmathi, renowned as the voice behind rocket launch countdowns during the ambitious Chandrayaan-3 mission, passed away on September 2 due to cardiac arrest.
Valarmathi had been a part of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) since 1984. The Chandrayaan-3 mission was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on July 14, utilizing the LVM-3 rocket.
Former ISRO director PV Venkitakrishnan confirmed her passing on social media and expressed his condolences. He mentioned that Valarmathi’s iconic voice would be missed during future ISRO mission countdowns at Sriharikota.
Union Minister of State for Entrepreneurship in India, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, also paid tribute to Valarmathi on social media, expressing sadness over her passing and offering condolences to her family and friends.
Valarmathi, an alumna of Nirmala Girls Higher Secondary School in Tamil Nadu, pursued engineering at the Government College of Technology in Coimbatore. She celebrated her 64th birthday on July 31, and her last mission with ISRO was the pre-launch countdown of the PSLV-C56 rocket carrying seven Singaporean satellites.
Chandrayaan-3, India’s ambitious lunar mission, successfully landed on the moon’s south pole on August 23, making India the fourth country after the United States, Russia, and China to achieve a soft landing on the moon.
The mission, which was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on July 14 aboard the LVM-3 rocket, involved placing the spacecraft in lunar orbit on August 5 and conducting a series of orbital maneuvers to descend closer to the moon’s surface.
In addition to Chandrayaan-3, ISRO recently launched India’s first sun mission, Aditya-L1.