Ankur Roy Telegraph picture
Ankur Roy, 15, a student of class IX, is over the moon. He has been selected to watch the live landing of Chandrayaan-2 on the lunar surface with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 7.
Ankur, a resident of Ambassa in Dhalai district of Tripura and a student of class IX at Dolubari High School, is one among 60 in the country to have won the online space quiz conducted by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) among school students of classes VIII, IX and X to increase awareness about India’s space programmes.
A message from Isro asked him to reach Bangalore on Friday to witness India’s historical achievement along with the Prime Minister in the early hours of Saturday.
His father Amarendra Roy and his schoolteachers are ecstatic over his success.
Ankur told reporters, “I tried my best but I never even dreamt of achieving this success. It is going to be an unforgettable moment of my life.”
India’s ambitious lunar mission Chandrayaan-2 will boldly go where no country has ever gone before — the moon’s south polar region. The mission will make India the fourth country to soft-land a spacecraft on the moon after the Soviet Union and the US in 1966 and by China in 2013.
The Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft, which has three components — an orbiter, a lander and a rover, all equipped with cameras and scientific instruments to study the moon — successfully entered the lunar orbit on August 22. Lander Vikram successfully separated from Chandrayaan-2 orbiter at 1.15pm on Monday.
Apart from Ankur, at least three other students from the Northeast, Tejashwini Gajurel from Assam, Kumar Lige Basar from Arunachal Pradesh and Ribait Phawa from Meghalaya, will witness the lunar landing live from Isro headquarters on Saturday.
